Originally Posted by Captain Ahab Jr (Post 11078936)

My living room has real oak floor in a mix of 10", 12" and 14" widths and rustic grade timber so plenty of character

Wanted the 200 year old look, anything narrower or engineered wouldn't have looked right. It's been down for 15yrs suffered a real beating from dogs, kids, furniture and open fire embers but just looks better and better for it

Installed it myself, stored the planks in the room for a couple of months to acclimatize to the room humidity, nailed sheets of high quality plywood to the concrete floor and then glued and nailed the planks. Used traditional rose head nails so the heads are slightly proud. Only treatment was a wipe with a hard wax oil

If I owned a modern North American style home think I'd go with an engineered oak flooring as the style needs to fit in with the general decor

Originally Posted by red-beard (Post 11079271)

If we were in a conventional house with wood-subflooring, I would have gone with standard hardwood flooring.

Originally Posted by javadog (Post 11079588)

Speaking of dogs...

I recently moved to another state and am renting a house for the time being. It's been re-fiitted with some sort of engineered wood floor (it was built in the 80's and originally had mostly carpet.)

I think the floor is crap, as is the installation. But, my point is...

It's like an ice skating rink for the dogs. They have to move really slowly to walk across it, especially around corners. If they lie down, they struggle to get enough traction to stand up again. I've had to buy area rugs and the like, just so they can get around.

Originally Posted by aschen (Post 11079660)

no expertise here, but we have installed engineered in our current and previous homes. We have been happy with the results.

I love the traditional thin plank oldschool hardwood floors. Every vendor I visited said that these would be a bad Idea for ground floor on slab install in the Houston region. Seems like most people I know around here are installing wood look tile these days. Too loud and hard for me though.

Originally Posted by gregpark (Post 11080097)

A huge part of my business is Luxury Vinyl Plank. I'm a believer. The new generation click looks and installs so much better than the crap I used to glue down 40 years ago. 100 percent water proof and damn near scratch proof. The better quality is guaranteed for life. I haven't sold laminate for 25 years. It's crap. MDF or particle board core. Ponding water finds it's way into the cracks, swells at the joint and looks like hell in the reflection of the light. Even back in the day I refused to install it on stairs. Some kid in socks is bound to get hurt

Originally Posted by red-beard (Post 11080107)

If you do go the Engineered route, stay away from MDF and Particle board. The one we used was basically plywood with a hardwood top.

On concrete you have to level the floors by using a leveling compound. Then you have to use a glue that seals the concrete like a vapor barrier.

In our business, we went with floated laminate floors. Cheap, look good, stand up to traffic. If they had the vinyl stuff when we put the office together, I would have used that. It is even better looking and impervious.