Wood, Parquet or Laminate???

Elle

Wed, Dec 13 2006, 3:03 am

I'm renovating now, and I dont know if to put real wood parquet down or the lamenation for floors.
What are the pros and cons of each?
Anyone have any experiece/advice?

sarahd

Wed, Dec 13 2006, 7:15 am

We used laminate and I am really sorry that we weren't able to spend the money for parquet. The pros of laminate that I know of are that it's much cheaper and supposedly easier to maintain. The cons (IMO) are that laminate is colder, doesn't have the sheen or beauty of parquet and I find it very difficult to keep clean.

mimsy7420

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 2:15 pm

I have a parquet and I am very happy with it. It is easy to keep clean and everything but every time I see a scratch I get SO sad.
But I know that I can always resand and varnish it if I wanted to.
So, although laminite is cheaper I don't think you can fix scratches, or sand it or anything.
It really depends on what your budget is. I think parquet or hardwood has a nice long life because you can revarnish it, but it's more expensive. I don't think laminite has the same longevity, but it's a cheaper expense now.

mimsy7420

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 2:20 pm

Laminite- synthetic wood, cheapest
Parquet- made of real wood but can only be sanded and revarnished so many times
Hardwood- most expensive, can be sanded and revarnished almost as many times as you want (assuming you don't do it every year Smile

)

Younger Me

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 2:31 pm

laminate floors are def. cheaper, but IMHO, putting down parquet or hardwood is an investment. think of the long run...
We have hardwood floors. it came with the house (well, it was hidden under hideous carpet, so we just uncovered it). it costed us a fortune just to sand, stain and varnish-but thta's also because it's a very very large area (2100 square feet). but it was worth it, it looks beautiful, and true, I get nervous about scratches, that's why I have a "no shoes in the house" policy. worse comes to worst, we can always resand it (usually done evry 10 years btw)

slush

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 2:32 pm

we had laminate put down on polished floor boards!
Not sure how good an idea it was now.
I love the look of the laminate - it's smart and bright and really easy to clean but it has a couple of deep scraches in it that can't be fixed ( as far as I know )
also we had a bit of a leak in one area and the board swelled a bit and has not gone down yet. doesn't look like it ever will!
you might have the same problem with parquet though!
dunno
good luck in deciding.

Elle

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 3:34 pm

Thanks, you really helped me decide. I'll go for the wood.
However I didnt know there were two types of wood - parquet and hardwood.
Whats the difference?

mimsy7420

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 3:44 pm

Well, parquet has a maximum time you can revarnish. But people don't varnish that often, so it shouldn't matter. It also looks different then hardwood. Hardwood is long rectangular pieces of wood. Parquet are smaller rectangular pieces of wood that make up those squares. So the floor looks like squares, but really each square is made up of 4 little rectangular pieces of wood. You know what I'm talking about?

So again, it depends on your budget and how long you are planning to stay in this house. If this is the house you will be in ad meah vaesrim, then it might be more worth it to just spend the money and put in the hardwood now. If you are planning to move in 10 years or whatever, then you might as well put in the parquet.

Although if you do decide to put in parquet in a house that you are staying in for long term, then there is nothing wrong with parquet, because it is cheaper.

sarahd

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 7:18 pm

only1 wrote:

Hardwood is long rectangular pieces of wood. Parquet are smaller rectangular pieces of wood that make up those squares. So the floor looks like squares, but really each square is made up of 4 little rectangular pieces of wood. You know what I'm talking about?

I'm not so sure this is correct. When we were looking at flooring we were shown many different parquet patterns. Most of them were longish pieces of wood in various patterns. The cheapest version was the squares you referred to. But it could be that what they refer to as parquet here is called hardwood in America.

cindy324

Thu, Dec 14 2006, 7:28 pm

Quote:

So the floor looks like squares, but really each square is made up of 4 little rectangular pieces of wood. You know what I'm talking about?

Wow, thank you for that only1! Very Happy

As I was reading the thread I was looking at my dining room floor and was trying to figure out if I had hardwood or parquet. I didn't even know there was a difference between the two. It seems I got parquet, but I got bigger squares with 7 rectangular pieces of wood inside, not 4.

mimsy7420

Fri, Dec 15 2006, 10:12 am

sarahd wrote:

only1 wrote:

Well there definitely is a difference between parquet and hardwood, but it could be there are more styles of parquet these days.