Bamboo floorboards

Has anyone out there got bamboo floorboards? Can you tell me what they're like? Are they hard wearing (commensense in consideration of course).
We are also considering laying them ourselves as it will save us 3 grand - and then the cost of solid bamboo flooring would be the same as laminate flooring (which I'm just not 100% sold on, they look nice but they're not REAL :p). DH is quite (read: very) handy... or is laying floorboards a bit of an art? Any info would be awesome! Thanks Ladies! x

We have the coffee colored boards in our living/dining/kitchen and I love them. They do get surface scratches but I have an almond oil stick which I put on any noticeable ones and they disappear :)

They are pretty much like any wooden floor, even though they are rated harder than most hardwood floors they still dent if you drop heavy items and scratch. One advantage is being solid you can sand and re-coat once wear becomes obvious which you cant with laminates.

We went with direct stick boards and had them laid dh was going to do it but in the end didn't have time as we built and were living with my mum and just wanted to move in ASAP

We had them put down in all the living areas of the house just before Christmas, they are solid compressed type, semi-gloss, direct stick. We love them! Dead easy to sweep and mop, and very very hard wearing. The bamboo is tougher than the toughest surface sealant you can get for floors, apparently. There are a few scratches from furniture, before we put pads on the feet of everything, but they're not very noticeable, adn they're in the varnish/sealant layer, not the bamboo. The type of board were you can see the slices all stuck together in lines are still pretty hard, but not as hard as the ones that are basically irregularly stripped and stuck together, then cut onto boards. The only thing is, because they're quite shiny, you do see the dust-bunnies when the floor catches the light!

We tossed up with fitting them ourselves, but decided that with such an expensive and permanent addition to the house (which will hopefully add value), we'd be better off getting a professional job done. All the wall-edges and middle bits are dead easy to lay, but having watched the processes involved in cutting and fitting the bits around window and door frames, and matching the different heights of other floor surfaces like the tiles in the bathroom/laundry/toilet, and the carpeted bedrooms and study, and the uneven slate edges to the kitchen and entry, I just know that if we'd tried to do it ourselves, these areas, which you see every single day, would have been nowhere near as well done.

We were certainly happy with what we got for our money.

A friend did hers herself and it looks amazing. I love it.

We laid our own tiles in our previous house, and I was imagining cutting into wood would be so much easier than tile. The whole leveling thing never crossed my mind though...
Hrmmmm...

So we got our bamboo floor boards! Yay! They are gorgeous. We got the natural coloured ones.
So I'm back to ask, how does everyone clean there's? Just a damp mop or can I use a steam mop on them?
Ours are compressed bamboo with a wax coating over the top, direct "stick"

I use an enjo mop on mine - any of the microfibre types would be the same. I found normal mop left them steaky & was a bit "wet". Installer told us no steam mop, just a damp mop.

I've heard they are really hard to cut and you'll go through a few saw blades. No idea if they are expensive or not though! My friend's look great though

Yeah, definitely no steam mop. We were told to dampen a microfibre mop with water, and then pour a little meths on it, and keep adding a bit of meths to the mop head every few square meters. It evaporates really fast, leaves no streaks, and the floor comes up beautifully shiny. The smell only lasts a few minutes.

That's what I thought. Thanks ladies! I have an enjo mop so I shall carry on using it :)