Laminate or Hardwood floor in a master bath?

[Matt Meiser]

We walked through a model home at our county fair last night and I wouldn't consider it to be a high end house but I thought it was interesting that they used laminate in the master bathroom. I liked the look and since we were already second guessing our tile selection for that room it got me thinking. Has anyone here used laminate or a real hardwood floor in a master bath?

[David G Baker]

I have read about using laminates in bathrooms and kitchens. The most important thing that has to be done perfectly is the seal around the edges. If moisture gets under the laminate it is going to be a major problem but as long as the perimeter is and remains sealed it should be okay. I would not want it in a bathroom that was frequently used by children, they may have an inclination toward getting moisture on the floor in excessive amounts.
I would not use hardwood flooring in a wet environment but they do have sealers that work very well. I would do a lot of research before I committed to using it as a bath floor.
I was thinking of using laminate for my kitchen floor but I live in an old farm house and the kitchen floor had a lot of issues so I went with linoleum

[Leigh Costello]

My brother did his whole house in Pergo. He sealed the kitchen and bathroom floors. He got maybe 2 yrs out of the kitchen floor and 6 months out of the bathroom floors. He replaced both with heated ceramic tiles (I believe he used the heating coil method under the ceramic tile). I used a laminate in our basement about 5 yrs ago and have had no problem, except where one the dogs wet on the floor near the door. Hope this information helps.

[David G Baker]

Matt,
Next time you visit a Borg take a close look at Pergo or any laminate flooring. It looks like a micro thin coating of vinyl on Masonite. When I did the looking, the thinness of the vinyl made me nervous. I have seen Masonite that has been exposed to moisture for a long period, it "ain't" pretty.
Leigh sounds like the voice of, at least second hand, experience. I would get a few more opinions and make my judgment from that.
I hate doing major upgrades a second time in the same house.

[Matt Meiser]

I've actually already got a laminate floor in my office in the house which I installed after installing a really cheap one in my shop office and having it hold up great for over a year after some pretty serious abuse--dirt, sawdust, grinding dust, melted snow, etc so I'm pretty familiar with its construction and installation. I'm with you on the second install, especially since this floor will run under cabinets, a clawfoot tub and a toilet.

We also have an engineered floor in our foyer and hallway. We've had a few emergencies due to a toilet overflow twice :mad:, and a washing machine malfunction. Water ran out of the laundry room and got on and under that floor with no ill effects, presumably since it was cleaned up quickly.

Part of the reason for rethinking the tile is the color we chose, but we also had tile in our kitchen at our last house. It is cold, hard, more difficult to clean, and we ended up with several cracked tiles where stuff was dropped (probalby not as much of a problem in a bathroom.) And I'm a little worried about the weight of the clawfoot tub cracking tiles.

Vinyl is pretty durable, especially in a bathroom where knives aren't getting dropped on it, but I worry that it will make the room feel cheap. I've also seen it get yellowed by a rubber-backed rug or bath mat sitting on it at both our house and my parents' house. Our vinly floors are over 15 years old and still look great though so maybe we need to go look at vinyl at a real flooring store?

[Bob Moyer]

Matt,
Next time you visit a Borg take a close look at Pergo or any laminate flooring. It looks like a micro thin coating of vinyl on Masonite. When I did the looking, the thinness of the vinyl made me nervous. I have seen Masonite that has been exposed to moisture for a long period, it "ain't" pretty.
Leigh sounds like the voice of, at least second hand, experience. I would get a few more opinions and make my judgment from that.
I hate doing major upgrades a second time in the same house.

I notice this in a number of posts - What is a BORG?

[Nancy Laird]

I notice this in a number of posts - What is a BORG?

Big Orange Retail Giant (HD) OR
Big Ole Retail Giant (Lowe's, Wally World, HD, etc.)

[Mark Rios]

Matt, I've got to be in the no laminate/engineered flooring in the bathroom camp on this one. I"ve pulled up a number of bathrrom and kitchen floors in the past couple of years and the "wood" or semi-wood products just haven't done well over time. The edge and end joints in a Pergo or engineered type floor are not sealed and moisture WILL eventually get inside. With the high humidity in a bathroom the odds are not in your favor, let alone dripping water on the floor after a bath or shower.

If customers ask my opinion I tell them to get either a high-end vinyl or go with tile. Generally, if the tile is laid properly, breakage should be minimized tremendously on a floor. Usually you will get tile breakage where the thinset hasn't been spread properly and it doesn't get good or proper adhesion. I will NOT install a wood product floor in a bathrooom and I try VERY, VERY hard to talk my customers out of a wood product floor for a kitchen because I can't guarentee that it won't be affected by moisture.

I recently laid roughly 500 sq. ft. of an engineered floor. At about $8 a foot it was a mid level quality product. I was comfortable putting it down but just barely. I expressed THOROUGHLY the pros and cons of the product and told them a couple of times about liquids getting spilled on the floor and the consequences. The day after I was finished with the floor I was putting on some door trim and one of the kids tripped in the hallway and spilled a cup of Seven Up on the floor. I reminded them that it should be cleaned up right away but, even though it was all wiped up within about 2 1/2 minutes, the edges still puckered up.

A real wood floor, one that gets finished after being laid, would be okay because it effectively gets a complete seal coats(s) over it, thereby sealing the joints.

I'd go with your first choice of a WELL LAID tile floor for your bath. And if you decide to heat it, all the better. :D

Just my opinion...............

[Jeff Heil]

Matt-

In our previous house we gutted and remodeled the second floor to the studs. A major reason for the remodel was to add a master bath and larger closet.

We went with an Armstrong laminate floor in the Master Bath that was designed for kithchens and baths. It was "water resistant" and had a green colored substrate. I went so far as to glue all the seams and put silicone caulk around the edges to seal against water running under the floor in the expansion spaces under the 3/4 wide base I installed to hide the larger than normal expansion joint. I made every effort to we make it an optimal install. We also ran an exhaust fan when showering to help avoid excess moisture.

We sold the house about a year later and the floor was holding up, but had some swelling near the shower where water seeped somehow. I wouldn't do it again based on our experience, even with all the extra steps we took. It was also cold in our WI winters. We love our Master Bath heated tile floor in comparison.

[Per Swenson]

Matt,

I am of the opinion that there is not a house constructed today which

at some point the plumbing in the kitchen, the dish washer etc, or

the bathroom, overflowing toilet, will not leak.

It is just a given.

Also you can not seal a floating floor around the edges.

That is why they call it a floating floor. If you fix it tight,

its going to buckle. Usually when you go on vacation in August and forget

to leave the a/c running.

You can get away with a properly sealed, finished 3/4 hardwood floor if installed correctly. Tight and absolutely no gaps.

Finished on site. So the clear coat really penetrates the joints.

But for all that work, tile in the long run is the most economical.

Being its a one time ever job.

Per

[Jim Becker]

I have it in our powder room and it's surviving, but with the girls getting a lot more water on the floor in one week than Professor Dr. SWMBO and I ever did in a year, it's likely not going to last forever. I'd definitely not recommend it for a bath that has a bath/shower, for sure.

[Jeff Heil]

Just for clarification the product I used was an engineered wood product that was glued to the subfloor with adhesive applied with a notched trowel, not a floating floor.

[Nancy Laird]

I've been making noises about replacing the vinyl in our shower/toilet with hardwood, as well as replacing the carpet in the vanity area with the same. LOML has said "no way", and after reading this thread, I think I've finally succumbed to the idea of ceramic tile.

On the issue of Pergo-type material, be warned that if your wife/daughter/mother/sister/girlfriend wears heels, you will soon have little pockmarks all over the Pergo. The PSI of even a petite woman wearing heels will dent and mark the Pergo. We have a friend in Virginia who found out the hard way; she ended up having to replace a HUGE kitchen/dining room floor after ruining the floor within six months of having it laid. She was not happy.

[Matt Meiser]

Yep, you guys convinced me to take another look at the tile. We went and priced vinyl at the local "good" place tonight. They quoted me $800 installed for a 13x9 bathroom. The vinyl itself was only $156 of that. We will NOT be going that route if that is a typical price.

We'd already bought good floor tile at a parking lot sale at the flooring place for <$1/sqft but were second guessing the color after seeing it with some other tile we chose, the wall colors we are looking at, the trim, and the cabinet color. However, we finally figured out that the real problem was the tiles we were going to use around the fiberglass shower (another clearance purchase for $.15/tile) So we think we are just going to buy different tile for the shower and keep the floor tile. We originally bought those tiles for the kitchen backsplash so we'll just use them for that as originally planned.

[Lee DeRaud]

I'll throw in a data point the other direction: I've got Pergo in the kitchen and all three (well, 2-1/2) baths. No problems at all with water so far, after close to 9 years in the kitchen and 6 in the baths. And yes, you can seal the edges of a floating floor: the silicone has enough give that buckling is not an issue, at least not in this (relatively dry) climate.

So far the only dings are in the kitchen where I've dropped heavy pans, but I doubt any other flooring would have survived that unscathed.

Note: this is the old "full-glue" Pergo, not the snap-together stuff and the Pergo glue is definitely not standard wood glue.

[Jason Roehl]

Matt...you could install the sheet vinyl yourself. You wouldn't believe how easy it is. I had never done it before and did a dining room for some friends of mine. By far the longest, hardest part of the job was laying down the lauan underlayment. Even with 6 kids it still looks good 3.5 years later. If you need installation details, let me know. That $800 quote sounds pretty high, but that is about right for an installed price from a retailer who subs out the work and takes a cut themselves.

I vote no on any wood or fake wood product in the bathroom. I HATE laminate flooring. :rolleyes: Hardwood could survive, especially if it has some natural rot resistance, like white oak and is NOT prefinished.

[Russ Filtz]

I notice this in a number of posts - What is a BORG?

You need to be a Startrek fan (next generation flavor) to fully appreciate the Borg analogy! "you must be assimilated" :eek:

One advantage would be there's probably a lot of 7 of 9's out there! :D

[Matt Meiser]

I've actually installed vinyl myself twice before but in smaller bathrooms. On this room, I was worried about working fast enough and accurate enough to get it done. I've never had it installed and was rather shocked at the price considering that vinyl is generally considered to be the low end flooring.

I can't imagine what our dining room and kitchen will cost when we have to have them done.

[David G Baker]

Years ago I put sheet vinyl in a small bathroom, it was my first time and was quite nervous. I made a pattern, put it on the vinyl, traced the pattern and cut on the lines. It fit perfectly. I prepared the floor, put down some glue on the floor in a far corner, combed the glue and laid down the rolled up sheet. I ran out of glue about half way through and sent my wife to the store to get some more. It didn't dawn on me that the can of glue that I had should have done two floors the size of the one I was doing. I added more glue when my wife returned. As I was rolling the floor I noticed lumps under the vinyl. I looked at the glue can and read the size of comb I should have been using. I had used the wrong size comb and had put down more than twice the glue required. I rolled as much excess glue to the side of the sheet and cleaned as much as I could off of the vinyl. In the end it looked okay, only I knew that the small lumps were excess glue.
Would I do it again, yes, now that I know a little more abut it. I will not attempt a large room, I know better.
I had my kitchen floor covered with sheet vinyl, it cost me around $720 and was done by a local business. Lowe's wanted over $1,400 to do the same job.