Living room - sand floorboards/laminate or carpet?

[SoupDragon]

The carpet in our living room is yucky both in colour and unidentifiable stains.

I have a hankering for a wooden floor (we have a large rug in the middle anyway). Should I go with sanded floorboards, laminate, proper wooden flooring or stick with a new, nicer carpet?

Bearing in mind BabyDragon will be potty training in a couple of years and spilling drinks for the foreseeable future with her brothers.

i prefer sanded. if you have decent floorboards why not? wiping pee pee up from a floor board is so much nicer than soaking it up from a carpet.

Sanded boards if you have good boards, or wood floor.

sanded boards with a (preferably washable) rug.

I only have carpets in 'living' areas - can't stand wood or laminate in rooms that we sit and relax in. Have wood in hall, kitchen and soon having it in morning room too. Playroom and lounge have carpet - I just have them cleaned about every 5 months or so.

Give me sanded florboards any day! Nice and easy to maintain and clean. Throw down a big rug for warmth, colour etc.

There are some nice real wood floors out there too but not sure how they would cope with spilt drinks, potty training accidents and so on as we had one in our dining room that didn't cope well with a slow leak from a radiator.

Personally, I can't stand laminate so wouldn't even go there.

laminate. we have really nice floorboards but we found them really draughty when we just sanded them so we switched. we have parquet (sp?) in the hall though so we kept that.

oh sorry didn't realise proper wood flooring was an option. - that definitely i much prefer our parquet than the laminate.

other than that is tiling an option?

Sanded flooe boards, as ling as your house isn't too drafty.

sanded floorboards with yacht varnish will cope with ANYTHING!

Whatever you do, DON'T get jute floor covering!

I wanted "natural" and thought jute would be just the ticket, as it has a soft feel to it. The salesman appeared not to notice my huge belly, and extrapolate forward to the small child to come! Even if you don't manage to spill anything on it (impossible, IME) general wear and tear leaves it grubby, and you can't wash it. It shrinks. I've tried . I'm saving up to have the concrete floor removed, and oak floorboards put down. Dh is allergic to "fake wood" and I tend to agree with him (OK I know laminate is partly real wood, but it's not good enough for DH!).

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If you have boards use them. Laminate would depend on the house - doesn't always work in period properties.

Laminate is easier to clean, nothing falls down the gaps or soaks in. We had a great one at our old house from B&Q, slate tile effect and it was the more expensive quality suitable for shops and heavy usage. I'm a bit befuddled by the real floorboards here, not really sure how to clean them.

sanded w/yacht varnish. my sister used this and i agree it works a treat!

i HATE carpets. i really, really do.

Forgot to add my friend has real slate tile flooring and much preferred my fake ones as hers were cold and got crap stuck in the grouting.

Sanded boards/Wooden floors everytime.

Real floorboards always look better than laminate which does look cheap in comparison

BoD. We just sweep and mop ours. Easy peasy.

not laminate

Def. not laminate. We have it in our kitchen which is fine in someways - but if one of the kids spills a drink, it's a disaster. It's very slippery. We've had several nasty falls.

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Maybe our floorboards were just badly done, you can't see daylight between them but I'm sure there's allsorts living in the gaps and sweeping/hoovering doesn't really do it. Makes me feel a bit icky if I think too hard about it, can you slop bleachy floorcleaner on them like laminate?

I didn't know that - we've obviously got the cheap version

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they don't have to draughty if done properly. the guy who did ours had a reference from Colin and Justine so i just had to hire him. he did a fantastic job.