DH & I have just bought our first house. It's pretty much perfect, we'd just like to modernise it a bit. I'd like some advice on what you would prefer & why.
The bedrooms & front lounge room are carpeted. The kitchen, living/dining & activity room (small corner next to kitchen, perfect kids play area) are lino. The carpet is fine. What I would like to do, is put timber laminate through the remaining areas. DH is not fully against this, but is adamant about carpet in the kids play area.
I do not want carpet there because I feel timber laminate is WAY easier to clean, and seeing as I will be the one doing all of the big cleaning jobs and child caring all day long, I want something easy. Kids vomit, mess their pants and rub stuff into carpet. I don't want to be down on my hands and knees trying to get ferral smells and stains out of carpet when I could just run a mop over it. Happy to put a rug down for kiddies to lay on, but at least that can be taken outside and hung on the line to dry/air out if need be.
DH wants carpet, because, well all I can get out of him is that it's softer to lay on and kids prefer it.
I don't want to have an argument about this with DH, life is too short, but neither of us will budge.
It's hard on my feet and back to walk on. If I walk around barefoot, by the end of the day I'm in agony.
It's not hard wearing. Ours has so many chips and dints in it, from things getting dropped over the years (things as light as a fork could chip it). Our slow cooker lid dropped (whole other story) and where it landed, there are 10 chips. Ours is a dark mahogany colour so the chips are very obvious. The slightest thing scratches it - our high chair for example, even on wheels. We have evaporative cooling - the floor hates it and becomes damp and creaky.
It doesn't shine when you mop it. It looks clean, but never glosses up and looks pretty. It gets dirty very quickly. I can vacuum and mop and the very next day it looks like it wasn't done, so if you go down this path, get yourself a really good broom because you'll be using it a fair amount.
SIL has it too and hers is a lighter colour, almost a pine colour. I can't see the chips in it, but she said that her's come out in a dark grey, making it look like there's something on the floor.
Our house is only five years old and the way these floors were sold to us....well we're not impressed. Sorry
We have Wunderlay Natural Timber flooring on our floor. It's nice to walk on, can be cut back if necessary. We built on a slab for our house. The slab was covered in a foam and chip board sort of stuff. So when the Wunderlay is laid on top of this, it's quite bouncy and comfortable to walk on. I can walk on my floor with bare feet all day and not feel sore by the end of the day. It's also quite warm to walk on too, tiles would be very cold. Although that probably wouldn't be a problem in WA I assume.
In comparison, my BIL has hard timber floors glued directly onto his slab and it is extremely hard to walk or stand on all day.
Our floor is now 11yrs old and now needs a cut back and polish. It has been very hard wearing considering we have had parties before kids and now young kids.
Machine washable rugs for play areas!!!! They are my life saver. My family/tv room had cream carpet when we moved in, old but in good condition, 3yrs later is trashed, i cant get it clean any more, it gets spots where i don't notice a little spill and then the damp/sticky picks up dirt.. its horrible.
We have been doing the floors bit by bit, the living areas now have slate which i love, easy to clean cool in summer, warms from the fire in winter. Wood in the play room with an Ikea rug i can chuck in the washing machine every few weeks. The evil carpet will be replaced with the same slate.
We have carpet upstairs in the bedrooms, downstairs we have floorboards everywhere apart from the study and playroom - so kitchen, family area and entrance way. We did have tiles and then pulled them up and put down floorboards - to be honest - I hated the tiles - they were sooooo cold and hard and horrible to watch when DS was learning to crawl. I love floorboards, very easy to clean, they seem to be wearing well and we have no problems with them. I don't mind the carpet in the playroom, I have a large rug in there and have had a couple of accidents in there which have luckily gone on the rug and have cleaned up ok. I do feel warmer in the playroom, not sure if that has got to do with having carpet in there or not. My Mum & Dad and sister have timber laminate in there new houses and they aren't happy with it - my sisters is a very dark colour and shows up everything.
There are tiles in the area where my children play. It's cold and hard and i wouldn't recommend them. I have a huge wool rug that covers most of the tiles now. They chip and crack too if something gets dropped on them hard enough (like a beautiful heavy blown glass vase ) but admittedly not as bad as timber.
Dust is way more obvious on timber than on carpet.
Kids are indiscriminate with vomit. They will do it where you least expect it. Poo is a bit like that too.
I'd rather have carpet anyday, but then i'm in Melbourne and it is a bit cold ATM.
Our entire house minus bedrooms is tiled. They look good and are pretty easy to clean.
Only downsides for us are:
- They're a light colour so fur from our black lab shows up very easily, we need to sweep every night even though he only goes in the laundry and one mat in the family room
- They're fricken freezing in the morning!! I've bought DD some baby moccasins and I wear uggies or socks til our heater kicks in
- They're very hard. DD is just learning to walk so any falls where she hits her head are bad I've got those big rubber connecting floor mat thingies in the family room for her
Other than those things I like them, I think I'd choose tiles again. Mostly because they're easier to clean than carpet! Apparently they do chip, we have one chip from the previous owners but I've dropped a few pretty heavy things in the kitchen without damaging the floor.
Totally agree that laminate timber is awful. And you can't get them too wet. Any spills have to be wiped up immediately or you risk the boards swelling and warping....you should see my kitchen.
We have tiles and carpet in the house we own and that is my preference, but my ILs have laminate tiles that are made from recycled car tyres. They look very similar to our tiles but are much softer to walk on and more durable.
I'd probably go for tiles over laminate. I put down laminate through my house and don't love it - it's ok, but it does get dirty looking quickly like already said. I couldn't do tiles in my house because of the floors so that wasn't an option.
Perhaps you can get a nice carpet square edged for the play room?
I don't like laminate either. No matter what they say, it scratches really easily and it can't be sanded regularly, or at least not often.
In our last house we had solid wood floors and while I loved the look of them, they were a pain in terms of scratches, dents etc. The girls were not quite 2 and 3 when we moved so it wasn't like they were very rough but just pushing things along the floor made me wince.
In our current house we ripped up all the carpet in the living areas and tiled. The girls have a huge play room so there is a big rug on the floor in front of their couch and tv so they can be comfy and warm on the floor if they want to be, but the rest of the area being tiled is fantastic for keeping clean. They have a plastic table and chairs that stays on the tiles so paint, crayons, playdough etc is really easy to clean up from the floor - unlike trying to get playdough out of a rug!
The tiles are definitely colder under foot than the wood flooring was, but its not like that's a bad thing for us over in Perth most of the year anyway!!
Lenny - oooooh. I feel your pain at the vase. That's so sad.
We had a combination of tiles and timber laminate in our old house. The tiles were very cold in the winter and hard on your feet, particularly getting up to a crying baby in winter. Out timber laminate was a medium colour but dull and it could look dirty at times.
In our new house we have tiles in the hallway & wet areas, except the kitchen where it is floating floor boards and this continues into the family room, meals and playroom. I like the playroom with timber floors b/c you can access outside. I have a large rug on the floor for DD to lie on and it has her small table & chairs on it. I like the floating floor boards but I got them redone in a matt finish & I wish I went semi gloss b/c sometimes you can't tell if the floor it clean or not. Also the floating floor is much warmer than the tiles
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