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View Full Version : Lumber Liquidators Laminate Floors?



Matt Meiser
11-29-2010, 5:53 PM
Anyone used them? We are looking at one of their mid-priced laminates for my daughter's room. The other option is a Pergo from Home Depot.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with laminates. Sure if you look close they aren't wood, but some its getting hard to tell. Especially since some of the wood floors look so fake due to exaggerated "hand scraped" textures and finishes that must be 1/32" thick. No way we are doing hardwood due to cost--I'm not putting a $1K floor in a kids room. Its laminate or carpet the laminate will look better and probably last longer. I've had HD's cheapest laminate in the little office in my shop for close to 7 years now. Snow, deris, a rolling chair, etc are always getting tracked on it and once a year when i mop it it looks like new again. My home office has HD's mid-grade laminate and it still looks great after close to 4 years other than a spot where acid from a UPS battery got on it. With hardwood I might have been able to sand that out but refinishing might have been problematic depending on the depth of the damage. Again rolling chair, average of 50 hours per week. There occasionally if the sun hits it just right you notice the funny joints but most people don't.

Roger Newby
11-29-2010, 6:16 PM
It may sound odd, but I don't like the sound of a laminate floor. :confused: It has a hollow clicking sound when walked on. We put laminate in one bedroom, all other floors are full 3/4" T&G oak over original T&G pine that is over 100 yrs. old. Very sturdy and quiet and not that difficult to install. Also, all were sanded after installation and finished with water-born poly that has really held up well.

Bill Davis
11-29-2010, 7:09 PM
I did my whole house most of it with Lumber Liquidators hardwood flooring. I was pleased with them, their product and service.

Like Roger I am not a fan of laminate flooring. I suppose they have their place and it's kind of the Ford/Chevy debate open to lots of opinion etc. But Lumber Liquidators is great!

Glenn Vaughn
11-29-2010, 7:38 PM
Lumber Liquidaators has a flooring that is inbetween solid and laminate - engineered. We did the first floor with it in bamboo and have 900 sq ft to put dow in the basement. It is real wood as opposed to laminates plastic coted photo. The flooring is base wood (not sure what) with a layer of the main wood on top. The floor can be refinished at least once. We did click flooring over a pad - it does not sound hollow. The finish on the flooring is hard - we tried sanding the finish off of some that we used for a counter top and gave up (it is aluminum oxide and really eats up sandpaper).

We did do 2 rooms with solid bamboo and we prefer the laminate - easier to install and actually looks nicer.

Jim O'Dell
11-29-2010, 8:27 PM
We thought about laminate for our guest bedroom. But chose to do tile instead. We found several samples of the laminate from LL that was very nice. One had a layer of real wood that was almost 1/8" thick. I think it was one of the bamboo samples. So many look to have a layer about the thickness of a sheet of paper. Our reason for going the tile route is the dogs. We have so many rescue dogs through our house, that we are afraid that liquid accidents will create a problem with soaking into the joints and getting to the softer wood underneath. Jim.

Dave Ogren
11-30-2010, 7:14 PM
Matt,

One of the companies that makes the laminate floring is Wilsonart in Fletcher, NC You can see their trucks on the interstate all over the midwest. Parent company is in Texas. I have been in their plant a lot of times They installed Laminate flooring between the shop and the office about 30 years ago as a test. This floor gets a lot if traffic and still looks terrific. It gets everything from the plant sand and on and on. That stuff must really be tough.
That being said it is a personal choice issue. I would not use a high pressure laminate that looks like wood. I make my bowls out of real wood not high pressure laminate. Good luck on what ever you decide. Oh! The real estate values the property more when it is a real wood.

Dave

Greg Just
11-30-2010, 9:24 PM
I have used LL a number of times and have been very pleased with the product. I have only installed their solid wood flooring and not used their laminate. Like others, I don't like the noise of the laminate, especially with a couple of dogs running on it.

Neal Clayton
11-30-2010, 11:23 PM
not sure about other places, but i often wonder why people don't deal with local millwork shops, since they often wind up cheaper.

my local lumberyard charges 1.25 a foot to cut whatever boards you bring them into flooring. so basically add about a buck to whatever lumber you prefer and voila, solid floors.

sure you gotta finish em yourself but that's not terribly difficult. one day of the home depot rental sander @ about 40 bucks a day and a couple of lambswool mop heads.

Gene Howe
12-01-2010, 5:12 AM
We did 1600 sq ft of LL bamboo. Used the recommended pad. easy to install. Not noisy. Pretty floor. Used some left over pieces for a work bench top. The stuff is HARD.

Chris Damm
12-01-2010, 7:27 AM
Don't bother looking at Wilsonart.
From their website: "Some bad news… While the Wilsonart Flooring brand has outlasted dozens of other laminate flooring brands, we have recently made the difficult decision to discontinue our business as of December 3, 2010. "

Matt Meiser
12-01-2010, 8:01 AM
Like I said, for cost reasons we are either doing laminate or carpet. Either can be done < $400 in one day. Pre-finished real wood or engineered would be easily double that, or if we went unfinished maybe in a similar range but several days for the finishing process.

Terry Wawro
12-01-2010, 10:09 AM
I've put down laminate in both of our houses. Some from Lumber Liquidators and some from Home Depot. Both were easy to install and all of it has held up OK. The "Traffic Master" from Home Depot is a good value for what you pay. If you can catch in on sale I think it is the best bang for the buck.

Laminate can be noisy if you use the cheap rolled foam underlayment. Make sure to upgrade it. I like Quiet Walk. It make walking on the flooring sound more like real hardwood. HD does not carry it around me so I had to buy it at Lowes. From the web...


Quiet Walk

Quiet Walk underlayment is more of a fabric providing an eco friendly product that is composed of mostly recycled materials. The makeup of Quite Walk allows absorption of any potential moisture and is guarded with an attached vapor barrier. The product also contributes to increased insulation values, keeping floors warmer in winter months and cooler in the summer.

Mark P. Miller
12-01-2010, 10:33 AM
Laminate can be noisy if you use the cheap rolled foam underlayment. Make sure to upgrade it. I like Quiet Walk. It make walking on the flooring sound more like real hardwood. HD does not carry it around me so I had to buy it at Lowes. From the web...


Definitely. Underlayment has a big impact on the feel and sound of laminate floors. It's worth it to upgrade, IMHO.

David Cramer
12-01-2010, 12:38 PM
Hi Matt

For money reasons we just did our kitchen with a dark walnut looking laminate floor from Sam's Club. Here is a link to the exact stuff we used. If it is against the site's link policy, I apologize in advance and please vaporize it in 4 milliseconds or the time it takes the SS blade to go into hiding:D http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product.jsp?productId=199100&navAction=push


Our kitchen is about 16 by 11 and the cost of the flooring was just over $250. The catch was the transitions strips for our color weren't available in the store, we had to order them. They costed around $125 for the linear feet that we needed. Yes, about half what the floor itself costed. They are literally MDF with the computer paper over it with the same finish and pattern as the floor itself. I tried to make my own, but honestly it wouldn't look right.

As far the floor goes, it was simple to put together and it has a green backer on it which helps in terms of installation, comfort, and sound. It cleans easily and it go well with our natural maple cabinets.

Full Discloser: I was anti-laminate flooring up until the last few years. They have definitely improved this product compared to when it first came out. Pergo brand was the first and they had problems, which steered me away from it for a long time. For what we paid and the ease of installation, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Hope this helps:)

David

Van Huskey
12-03-2010, 5:16 PM
You may want to try http://www.builddirect.com/

If you need enough to meet their minimum I highly recommend them. We have two GCs in the family that order by the container load from them, I used them for the floors in my vacation house, we got 2,300 ft sq of bamboo and it was MUCH better than the best bamboo LL had for less money and the milling was exceptional, out of what we used we had less than 3 boards that were unacceptable so I ended up with a lot of extra I had bought for waste. My uncle and cousin turned me on to them and they have never been unhappy with their products and they have used every manner of flooring from them.

Larry Heflin
12-04-2010, 1:58 AM
Have had ours for about 5 yrs now. Glued to slab. It has held up well and a room and a hallway has even survived being submerged after my niece's kid experimented with flushing things down the toilet one morning. Thankfully I had a shop vac, towels, and fans. Still looks good.