What do I need to know about flooring?

[Trinity524]

GM Disers....

When I bought my house, we bought cheap carpet because the builder didn't put down tile or Hard wood or an version of wood flooring. Since my son was about to be born, we said after he's learned to crawl, walk etc, we will replace. So, May will be 5 years. What do I need to know about flooring? What can I go cheap with, what needs to be quality products? I know nothing so, any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

 

[At World's End]

We put in hardwood 5 years ago and I HATE it. We were rushed to pick the flooring and didn't do our research. I wish we had researched the different types of wood and how they hold up to traffic. I have two boys and two small dogs. Our floors are trashed. Dings, dents, scratches everywhere. Our last house had Pergo floors and they were pretty much indestructable. I wish we had saved a fortune and installed laminate instead of real hardwood. We wanted the real thing for resale value, but we will have to refinish them when we sell the house in order for them to look decent.

The other thing to consider is that wood/laminate requires more cleaning, but you get a cleaner floor. With laminate/wood, you will see the dirt way faster than with carpet. And with carpet all you do is vacuum. With laminate/wood you have to vacuum/sweep, then mop (we use a steam mop). It's a pain. Can you tell I hate these floors? But it also makes you realize how much crud is hiding in people's carpets when you see how often you have to clean wood.

I would look into the diferent types of hardwoods and their hardness rating. Take your time looking at all kinds of woods in showrooms, you need to see it in person. A mistake I made was to pick the wood based on a small sample. What we chose had lots of color variations, and the sample I looked at was much darker that what we ended up with. I was disappointed when I saw it installed, but by that time it was too late.