Help me with wooden flooring and dogs…

[Toothicktounderstand]

Hi everyone, bought a new house (well old 1885) and want to remove the grey carpet and put in wooden flooring.

I’ve done up old houses before but can’t remember some stuff. There are no old floorboards underneath so - am I best to get engineered wooden flooring or solid? Last time I got some beautiful handscraped oak flooring but it was 15 years ago. I can’t remember if it was solid oak or engineered but hand scraped (it wasn’t flat ‘flat’).

Now I have a big German Shepherd and another smaller dog plus three cats.

Please help me understand what’s the best for us all? I don’t have a limited budget and need 30 square meters.

Will solid and engineered look and feel different? I don’t change decor at all. Very boring. So the floor will be down forever.

Also is it best oiled or lacquered with dogs? Cats etc? Thinking of scratches.

Any advice and help understanding would be great.

Thank you.

I don’t have an unlimited budget that should say :)

I have a mix of solid, oiled, in main rooms and engineered in a couple of rooms.

In my case, I chose the engineered for those rooms in which I was putting electric underfloor heating pads ( they don’t work with solid wood).

I have 2 dogs. I have found the engineered wood, where a thin surface is ‘coloured’ prone to scratches. The oiled wood is fine.

That said , as my dogs age, all the hard floors are slippery for them so I have more rugs down at the moment.

I would also say, unless you can find reclaimed wood, solid is more expensive than engineered.

If you do put some form of hardwood flooring in you will find that as dogs get older they will struggle to get up. I owned a Goldie and had to put in rugs to assist as he struggled in the 'winter years' of his life.

Thank you very much everyone. It looks like oiled solid flooring and rugs for the future.

Similar, I used solid oak (Sutton timber), and Osmo Poly X hardware oil, + dogs, and has been excellent, but I believe is not advisable for underfloor heating. (which I don't have).

I also took the opportunity to insulate between the joists which has made a big difference.