Engineered wood floor in a kitchen

[bitzermaloney]

I visited our local Amtico shop which also sells wood flooring, and after hearing that the area we want it for is an open-plan kitchen/dining/living room and we have kids and a dog, he said don't go for wood as it will get trashed.

Thing is, we can't afford Amtico once you factor in the cost of fitting it (made my eyes water).

Is he right?

We have had engineered oak flooring in our open plan kitchen and living room for 3 and a half years and it still looks really good. We are careful about clearing up any spillages quickly but apart from that it needs no other special care to stay looking good.

Fine for dining/living, not so sure about kitchens. There's always the water-spillage factor (leaky washing machines etc.).

We have it in kitchen. We have a mat in front of the sink and cooker and we clean up spills as soon as they happen. So far do good.

We have had it in ours for a year. It looks great. We do clean up spills quickly but then would anyway - does anyone just leave spills sitting on their floor?! Our washing machine and tumbledryer are in a separate (tiled) room.

Thanks. What kind of finish do you have? Lacquer? Oiled?

Maybe it depends on where your appliances are. Our washing machine (in the kitchen) leaked once or twice and we didn't notice straight away - I don't stand watching the washing go round! By the time we did notice the (rather ugly) laminate was wrecked.

We went for matt laquered. Laquered is definitely better in an area where there will be spills but I didn't want a shine that would make it look like laminate. We got ours from here - I would recommend them, stuff arrived when they said it would, was reasonably priced and they were happy to answer my millions of questions.

I have bamboo in mine and it's wonderful - looks utterly beautiful and very hardwearing.

When I asked about this type of floor the first question they asked was did I have a dog. I think liquid etc is fine if dealt with quickly but it's dog claws that cause the damage