09-20-2015, 12:36 AM | #1 |
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Solid wood versus engineered wood
I recently just purchased a 2,400 sq ft house in Northern CA. I can get a high quality synthetic/engineered wood to fill this space for approx $15,000 or a mid quality solid oak/ solid madrone with walnut inlays for $40,000... Is it really worth going real or does anyone these days even care? I plan on selling this place is approx 10 years.
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09-20-2015, 08:35 AM | #2 |
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We have engineered wood in a couple of rooms (master bedroom and my office), which has held up well for 13 years now. Looked great new and still looks great, including a spot in the bedroom that got some water damage from a leaking roof a couple of years ago (you'd have to touch it after I showed you to find it). People hear "engineered wood" and think it is laminate but that is not the case.
Engineered wood looks great and is lower-priced but I wouldn't expect to be able to refinish or repair it (if necessary) down the road. It may have done well in our family room and kitchen, but could be pretty worn and dented in those high traffic areas by now. Hard to tell, but it could still be cheaper to replace the engineered wood than buying real once and refinishing every so often. Maybe that doesn't matter if you plan to sell in 10 years, but it could matter to the buyer. It also depends a bit on the value of the overall home. Most homes are fine with engineered, but it would probably seem out of place in a multi-million dollar home with top-of-the-line materials throughout. At that price point it may be expected to have some rare wood imported from an exotic place.
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09-20-2015, 08:59 AM | #3 |
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There is a huge difference between synthetic and engineered wood!!!! Synthetic is an 100% man made product commonly named laminate (plastic). There are different thicknesses and finishes. I think they look ok for an office or a store, but not for a home. Be aware that it will feel hallow no matter what.
The other material is engineered wood. This product is a plywood base plank with a 2-3 mm of real wood on top, normally called the wear layer.This is my choice for my house. Chech Hardwood Bargain. They have a bunch of choices on engineered wood. Pick something hand scrapped with oil finish min 5" wide. Stay away from the high gloss and flat surface. This product can installed with nails, glue or floating. This product might be around $5 sq ft plus installation and Mouldings. Last is the solid wood. I try to stay away because of the nature of the product to "move". Solid wood is less stable than the engineered wood. |
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09-20-2015, 09:13 AM | #4 | |
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??? If you fill the house with wood, where are you (your tenants if it's a rental property) going to live? Outside the house in a tent or something? If that's so, wouldn't a barn or warehouse have been a better structure to buy and fill with wood? Blue: I think you need to ask yourself, not us, that question. Do you care? It's your home. All the best.
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09-20-2015, 09:20 AM | #5 |
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^ Agreed. "Artificial" and "engineered" are two different categories. "Engineered" as we have in our home is wood as described above but not "real" hardwood that people think of when they think of "hardwood floors".
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09-20-2015, 01:50 PM | #6 | |
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I should have been more specific, although I do appreciate the concern for my hypothetical tenants.. The house is for me (downsizing) but want to get rid of the nasty carpet. I don't need to move in right away, so what better way to take advantage of time than to re-do the floors. With an above comment it looks like engineered wood might not be the best bet since I have a Labrador. I'd likely just have to replace them in 10 years (or less) versus just sanding them.
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09-20-2015, 01:55 PM | #7 |
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I also have engineered hardwood. People really need to get educated on what engineered hardwood is. Even realtors. I still run into realtors that consider engineered hardwood as a laminate like Pergo. Not only is engineered hardwood practical in terms of environmental sustainability, but it is necessary in some situations. For instance, if you're laying a solid surface over concrete, you need to use engineered hardwood. Laying down a full hardwood plank on top of concrete is a recipe for disaster with moisture.
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09-20-2015, 01:57 PM | #8 |
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Go with engineered wood, it doesn't move, less maintenance and looks really good. I'd recommend Mirage since they make absolute top shelf product and the demand is so high that you'll have to wait roughly 5-6 weeks to get 1000sq ft plus from them. There's a Fall sale of $.50/sq ft starting the first week of October, maybe try and get in. Expect to pay upwards of $10/sq ft for the material alone, so, for 2400sq ft, around 30 grand plus. If you go wider plank like 6.5 inch plus, it's $12+. I have the Mirage Gingerbread and can personally vouch for how good it is. Spent a couple months extensively researching this.
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09-20-2015, 04:03 PM | #9 | ||
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This is from another forum because i'm too lazy to type it all again. I've been in the flooring industry since 1990, and before that my father started the business in 1972. I've been around it all my life and still currently own residential and commercial floor covering stores.
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There is another flooring product that wears like iron as well and we install about 250,000sf of it every year for about $1.37/sf. It lasts just as long as hard wood, probably longer since it won't ever rot or deteriorate. It's called VCT or Vinyl Composition Tile. What it has in common with solid wood floors is that the product installed without it's finish will not last very long, nor will it look very good. Both require a finish to be applied to look good and wear like iron. So with that in mind, what actually wears like iron? The wood or the finish? Since none of us are walking on the ACTUAL wood, the answer is the finish. Since engineered wood floors are comprised of wood, and solid wood floors are comprised of wood, and both products require a finish to be applied in order to wear well, what's the difference? The difference is in the finish. An on site finish typically goes on in a few coats and is typically 100% urethane. This creates a relatively soft urethane finish that is also relatively thick when compared to a factory finish. A factory finish goes on thin and is typically 100% urethane with a ceramic, or aluminum oxide additive. This additive makes the urethane much harder which means it can go on much thiner. In addition, heat is typically introduced in the factory finish process which opens the "pores" of the wood which allows better penetration of the finish. Because the finish is harder and thinner, the penetration makes it far less likely to separate from the wood surface under expansion and contraction due to atmospheric conditions. So the quality, time tested product you are talking about is wood, which is what engineered floors are made of. It's the finish that allows those floors to remain serviceable. Either by means of reapplication or technological advancements. You could staple plywood to your floor joists, cover it with urethane and get the same serviceable time frame out of that as you do solid wood by reapplication. Now that we all realize that the finish is what we're talking about in regards to wear. I'll say that a factory applied finish, when applied in the same quantity, is by far and away, miles better than an onsite applied finish. However, with multiple coats, the on site applied finish can become just as robust in it's ability to protect the wood. It just does it through thicker armor where as factory finish is more like today's thiner smart/reactive armor. _______________________ To my point of longevity of engineered floors. You can apply additional layers of urethane over and over again to engineered floors. The 2400sf owner's suite at Ramond James Stadium (where the Bucs play) has an engineered floor installed throughout. They wanted the look of an ebony stained solid wood floor. So we found a 2-3/4" wide ebony stained, square edge, pre-finished, engineered floor since they have a concrete slab. Once installed they decided that the ebony stain wasn't black enough, so we screened the pre-finished urethane, purchased some top quality urethane, tinted it with black pigment and applied it. Looks perfect. (Although they then covered the floor with a 30' x 50' $194k area rug.) ________________________ Northern climate can shift greatly but the atmospheric conditions of the crawl space under you home doesn't shift nearly as much and that atmosphere has the greatest effect on your floors. ________________________ Its interesting how things that began their lives as means of providing basic necessity can now be deemed as opulent. And things that started their lives as opulent, are now deemed to be a cheap alternative. Solid hard wood as Sam pointed out, has been a flooring for God knows how long. Builders love using it because it's cheap and can be installed early in the build without the need to protect it from other trades since it's going to be sanded and finishes the week before the home owner moves in. But at the same time, it's not a very versatile renovation product since the increased thickness will cause you to have to reinstall base boards, door jambs, cut doors, and transition to other materials. In a house with concrete slabs, you'll be gaining 1.5" of FF height. On the other hand, it's great for renovations if you already have solid wood. You can add on another room, make a saddle between rooms, refinish everything and looks brand new. The other drawback of solid floors is that every installation looks the same. The only exception if the color of stain and if you want to add some border or medallion inserts. Can't do a french bleed stain. Can't have a hand scraped look with out paying someone to hand scrape it. Can't have a distressed/reclaimed look without having the wood be distressed or reclaimed. It does one thing and does it well. Most engineered wood floors, the nice ones, are more expensive than solid sand and finish. Unless you're weaving in borders and or medallions inserts. That's changing though; pre-finished (solid and engineered) hardwood is becoming so prevalent these days that the trade of on site finishing is beginning to die off. So it's becoming more and more expensive to find quality craftsman capable of the task. ....In the southern states anyway. Hopefully that's helpful for the OP. Many engineered floors are great, quality floors; don't let anyone tell you any different.
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09-20-2015, 04:07 PM | #10 |
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Go for best bang for the buck which would probably be engineered wood. You'll very rarely get your money back with things like the real wood when it comes time to sell. Same if you plan to rent the house.
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09-20-2015, 09:53 PM | #11 |
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My last house we put in about 1500sqft of real wood since it matched the rest of the house. Was nice but didn't add much value to the house when we sold. My new house has about 2000sqft of engineered wood and i think i prefer it to the real stuff. It doesn't seem to dent as easily.
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09-21-2015, 10:16 AM | #12 |
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First, I think you should get more bid on your job. It seems quite expensive.
Second, engineering(EW) vs solid (SW), as long as you don't buy very cheap EW, you can't tell the difference until you sand them out twice or more. EW uses real wood veneer on top and it should be the same. Third, they both will dent. And one doesn't dent more than the other because of the construction type. One may dent more only because finish coat is different. You can have oak flooring finished in cheap varnish vs heavy duty finish and totally tell the difference when you drop something on the floor. Benefit of having EW is to minimize the expansion and contraction, thus stays flatter, whereas SW will suffer from it over time with daily activity. Benefit of having SW is that you have peace of mind that you can refinish the floor as you want and have the "slightly" heavier feeling on your feet. This heavier feel is ever so slight and can be eliminated IF EW is installed correctly with correct padding. Hope this helps. |
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09-21-2015, 12:23 PM | #13 |
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For the near term future (next lustrum or so), I doubt it'll make any difference at all which one you choose, other than that one may cost a small bit less than the other. I can't recall noticing any visual difference between the two. Thus my advice is to consider what you might want to do in the future and choose now based on your plans to that effect. Perhaps you'll want to heat your floors or maybe replace the wood in some place, or many places, with stone or another material.
I had radiant heating installed and learned that the heat can cause wood flooring to shrink. I didn't have any engineered wood floors, but I'd suggest checking into whether the glues used to make them might release any gases that could be harmful if heated, that is if you think you might like to have heated floors. Mine have hot water moving through coils (the water is heated using solar power). I've noticed too that my overall monthly heating cost went down when I heated the floors. (Also, I absolutely love the warm feeling of stone and wood floors in the winter, especially in the bathroom.) Even if you don't want to install heat in your floors, you may have a vision of doing something different with the flooring at some point within the next decade or so, or maybe you are just fickle about household appointments and want to change things from time to time. If something like that's the case, it may make more sense to keep the costs lower now if there's a real possibility that you'll replace your flooring later. All the best.
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09-21-2015, 04:01 PM | #14 | |
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Those are some crazy prices. I redid my entire first floor which is about 800 SQFT with 4" oak, installed, leveled, sanded, stained and polished at about $6 sqft. Mind you I dont live in east bumblef** and labor prices are not cheap. This is right outside of Manhattan and as pricey as suburbs get. Shop around!
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09-21-2015, 05:40 PM | #15 | |
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There is a dealer around town that advertises Hardwood installed for $6.00/sf. The only way he's able to do that is by purchasing the most inexpensive hard wood available and purchasing it by the container. And even then, he doesn't hardly make any money. It's basically a loss-leader product. We sell $15k worth of engineered wood all the time. SF quantities range from 1000sf for good stuff to 2000sf for entry level product. For a custom solid wood install with walnut inlays, $15 to $25/sf isn't a stretch by any means. I've sold a custom hardwood playroom to a family and the cost for that ONE room was $36,000. Same goes for carpet, great high quality, wool carpet cost money. I sold a woman travertine for her master bedroom, she kept the existing carpet in her closet and then decided to change it. She came in and spent $17,000 on carpet for her master closet. The quality between different products within the same family can be drastic; you can bet the price difference will be drastic as well.
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09-22-2015, 08:55 AM | #17 | |
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When I finished the basement in my old house, I put in the $2sqft carpet from Home Depot with the free install. Looked and felt pretty good, but we sold the house right after, so Im not sure of the durability For Hardwood, I'd say those prices are pretty close. When we did ours, we got quotes ranging from $20-40/ sqft installed and matched to our existing, but I ended up doing it myself for much less. |
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09-22-2015, 11:40 AM | #18 | |
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In the scheme of Good, Better, Best, Ultimate; the average price for the "better" grade of carpet, with pad and installation is about $3.50/sf. The closet carpet above was about $28.00/sf. To be fair, the closet was about 600sf. I bet you saved a lot by doing it yourself. If i recall, skilled labor in N. Colorado is expensive.
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09-22-2015, 12:27 PM | #19 |
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Engineered wood IS real wood on top of plywood. I think it's a great hybrid product. Given the plus of stability, I'm not seeing the value of 100% real wood anymore. Real wood mattered when you were comparing against laminates which look good from a distance, but feel and look different up close because they are not real wood. To me the ability to endlessly refinish real wood is not too much of an advantage.
If you can hone in on the specific product you want and the kind of installation you want, you can get more apples to apples quotes and drive your price down. Generic quote prices vary on so many things and can't really be compared. Good luck. |
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09-22-2015, 02:33 PM | #21 | |
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Laminate got labeled as a wood alternative through the brilliance of Pergo's marketing back in the 90s. It's really a completely different category of flooring that is extremely durable in regards to wear and happens to look good when produced in a wood look. While it's extremely durable in regards to wear from normal usage, abrasions, scratching, etc... it's extremely susceptible to moisture. Most laminates are installed over a thin plastic sheet that acts as a moisture vapor barrier. The core of most laminates consist of MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) basically saw dust compacted with pressure and heat to form a board. When wet, it acts like a sponge absorbing the moisture. A good laminate that uses a good click together system will guard against topical spills and moisture very well. But let liquid sit on a seam long enough or let moisture get to the exposed edges of the boards and you'll likely see it blow up quickly. Most laminates are installed via a floating method as well. This is what gives them that usually negative characteristic of being loud and clicky sounding. The positive side of that is if you live in a high-rise condo or apartment which requires sound mitigation when you in stall hard surface floors. Since laminate isn't attached to the floor when installed, it's exempt of that extra sound controlling material like cork. Some engineered floors can be installed in a floating method as well. But you will still get the loud clicky characteristic of laminate, though slightly more muffled since wood is less dense than the laminate surface. Engineered floors, being constructed with cross grain layers like plywood create dimensional stability unmatched by any solid hardwood or laminate. It's typically glued to the substrate when installed at or below grade level. Most of the time it's glued to concrete and stapled (nailed) to wood subfloors that are above grade. Though it can be glued to any substrate. Adhesive is the most important item when installing via a glue down method. 99% of engineered wood failures are due to improper adhesive being used. Solid hard wood is typically nailed down which requires a wood substrate. Here in FL, most houses are built on a concrete slab which requires a layer of 3/4" plywood to be installed over the concrete slab. This is an undesirable aspect of installing solid wood over concrete which is why most people with a concrete subfloor will opt for engineered wood floors. Sold wood floors are much more susceptible to moisture than engineered. That's why most of the time you'll find it called strip wood which refers to it coming in strips rather than planks. Strip wood is 2.5" wide where as plank is recently available in 12" widths. The grain of solid wood all running in the same direction means it's likely to warp and curl up on the edges. In the 15 years i've been active in this business i can count on 1 hand how many people have re-finished the floors they bought. It doesn't happen often. And a factory finish is superior to an onsite finish due to being able to control the environment in which the finish cures. Aesthetically, engineered floors have a HUGE range of design differences to choose from. Different textures, colors, widths, bevels, distressed, etc... Where as most sold wood installs look like either a flat smooth matte finish floor or a flat smooth gloss finish floor. There is little texture options and less 3D staining options like a french bleed. To get those characteristics from a sold floor is when you start getting into the upper $20's and $30 per sf prices. It's extremely rare and requires quite a craftsman to make it look good. Unless it's a historic home with original wood floors, i personally will always opt for engineered wood floors over the solid variant.
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09-22-2015, 03:49 PM | #22 |
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That's the only scenario where I see some value in solid wood. Almost like trying to restore with OEM parts to make an auto analogy.
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