Carpets versus wooden floors

[oliveoil]

do we:

a) put down new carpets
b) sand floorboards (shudder)
c) laminate

Have inherited carpet and badly done laminate at the moment.

Need to do up house to make myself think I live in a nice area. Ha!

PS - Is sanding floorboards going to be as horrific as I think? Don't pick b.

c) t's really rewarding to mop them if you only do it once a week

Ugggh! Carpets are horrid. I HATE them.

Hire a professional to sand the boards and put rugs over there.

laminate, love it, and always looks lovely when cleaned.

Carpets are warmer though, I always prefer the room with carpets in.

Laminate/wood looks better though.

Hmmmmmmm.

Yuk at laminate unless its the real wood stuff that looks like floor boards and costs a packet.

My second choice would be laminate. I've also found it to be pretty warm.

I grew up in a hot climate and the one bonus was that we had these lovely Mexican tile floors in the whole house - except the bedrooms, which had lovely seagrass carpets.

CARPET! can't stand wooden floors. they're noisy, annoy your neighbours (unless you soundproof very well) they get really dusty, they're slippery, you end up putting rugs down which slide about

wooden floors has advantage that u can mop up spills nd it looks nicer.

But it isn't nice to walk on, it is noisy if you are under it. Not nice for babies that are rolling around on it. Plus the dust!! It is a nightmare wth all the dust that it seems to gather, adn I do hoover and mop regularly.

I have sanded adn varnished floors, and it is crap. The varnish gets worn off, parts of the wood seems to peel in places, and is sharp and dangerous.

I want carpets back again!!

we put laminate down in our hall and carpet in our sitting room but sometimes wish wed just done all of it laminate [ also couldnt bear the idea of sanding floors with two young children in the way] and now our sitting room carpet is all marked even though they arent allowed in with shoes on and its driving me loopy cleaning the marks up ,however i had laminate throughout my last flat.it looked lovely and was very easy to clean but cold in winter .. floorboards generally once they are done that s it for a long time before having to revarnish and no more expense of replacing carpet . probably doesnt help but if youve got kids it s a floorboards or good laminate that will last well.

DON'T sand floorboards yourself - nightmare! get it done - can be surprisingly cheap. at our last flat we had sanded floors everywhere except the 2 bedrooms which had carpets - good compromise.

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We have laminate throughout downstairs but tbh i'm not overly keen.
It's great up the dinning end and in the kitchen because any spills can be easily cleaned up, but up the living room end it feels uncosy (i know thats not a word).

We are supposed to be having our wall between the living and dinning room put back up and i think then i will go back to having carpet in the living room instead.

Plus if you put a cup of tea/coffe/anything hot down on laminate it sucks all the heat out and within a nanosecond it's stone cold.

Now, if that's not reason enough not to have laminate I don't know what is!

I discovered this when DS1 was a teeny baby and I'd warm his milk in a jug of boiling water, the water never stayed hot for long enough to warm the milk. A right PITA!

Yuk. Unhygenic carpets. The worst is when people have them in the kitchen and bathrooms. Boak! Filthy.

we've got wooden floors, was laid by a professional carpenter and was surprisingly cheap. don't varnish them though have them waxed.

varnish is too shiny and peels off after a realtivley short period of time, whereas wax you can just reapply as and when you need to. we had our floors done 2 years ago and i haven't had to redo them yet, but have carpet on the stairs and upstairs.

general wear and tear on carpet upstairs is minimal compared to those downstairs and carpet quickly looks worn, even when we brought really expensive carpet (£80 square foot) it still got grubby really quickly and with the hard floors you just mop and they look as good as new!

carpets every time - I like warmth and sound proofing.

I did have laminate in the kitchen and hallway at my old house but wouldn't have it again

Carpet. I live in Scotland and anything else is too cold! Wool carpet and wood are most the most environmentally friendly, laminate has lots of chemicals and pollution from the mfg process, I've read somewhere.

nothing unhygienic about carpets!
not if you keep them clean

they're now saying that laminate/wooden flooring is worse for asthma sufferers than carpet

I live in Scotland and if I could ditch the carpets I would in a hearbeat. I'd rather be chilly than dirty.

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hey! who are you calling dirty!

only joshing - I still lurrve carpets

i dont think its possible to keep carpets as clean as you can keep a wood floor/laminate.
id go withthe wood throughout the house if i could

I'd have wooden floors every time for health and asthetics.

Carpets give me asthma and smother the house.

Laminate is a) Ugly and b)Everwhere (including my kitchen floor, unfortunately)

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wood floors are worse for asthma sufferers... read about it a while ago.
because the dust floats around all over the place rather than staying in the carpet and getting hoovered up