The floors in my home need to be redone, what should I choose?

Answer 1

Hard wood

Answer 2

lamite flooring is the way to go. it is relativly inexpensive and very durable. I just did my kitchen with an old plank pine look. it cost about 600 bucks for the materials and we did it in a weekend. It is very easy to keep clean as well

Answer 3

what are the options. I just put down laminate wood floors and they're beautiful. Have pets and can't get real wood because the pets would scratch the wood but the laminate won't get damaged

Answer 4

Took the carpet up off mine last winter. Put down maple hardwood floors. Gorgeous!

Answer 5

Laminate hardwood floor. It is beautiful. My mother in law has it throughout her whole house. it is easy to clean and it gives her house the illusion that it is bigger.

Answer 6

Ready-made ceremic tiles

Answer 7

I think Kajaria tiles is good u may also try marble stone but i think it will be costly and slippery too. I personally prefer tiles

Answer 8

go to sparktec tiles. you were not mentioned how much damage on your floor

Answer 9

Well before you actually delibrate on the type of flooring u want, u might want to consider the following points...

Do you really need to sand?

Sanding a floor is hard, noisy, time-consuming, disruptive and incredibly dusty work. Sometimes it´s unnecessary as well. Often a thorough cleaning, followed by waxing or a fresh coat of varnish will yield the same result - with less than half the hassle. Use a commercial wood floor cleaner or paint thinner and steel wool to remove built-up wax and the dirt entrapped in it. You may be surprised to discover that the original finish underneath is in fairly good shape. Revive it with natural-resin varnish, not polyurethane, which may not bond well with the old finish. Also determine whether your floor can withstand another sanding. Most old oak floors started out 3/4 inch thick and can sustain several sandings. Check the thickness of the floors in your house by removing a shoe molding or baseboard. If the floors seem thin - parquet for example, is generally thinner than wood strips - be cautious. You could wear through to the subfloor. If the flooring is thinner than 1/2 inch, use a buffer fitted with a screen abrasive, which will remove less of the wood´s surface.
Preparing a room for sanding

If at all possible, refinish floors before you move into a house. Otherwise, remove absolutely everything from the room or rooms you will be sanding. Even objects that are nowhere near the floor will end up coated with sawdust. Then follow these steps to make the room ready. Remove any baseboard shoe moldings so you can maneuver the edger close to the room´s perimeter. Check for popped nails by dragging a putty or broad knife across every square inch of the floor´s surface. The knife will click against any nail that is above the surface. Countersink popped nails with a hammer and nail set. Seal off bookshelves and other openings with polyethylene and masking tape. Close or seal air registers, too. Cover doorways to adjacent rooms with wet bed sheets. Open doors and windows to let out the dust. Extinguish any pilot light or other open flame in the vicinity. Airborne sawdust has been known to explode. Always wear a dust mask, goggles and hearing protectors when you sand.

Finally, plan on a thorough, top-to-bottom house cleaning afterward. Despite your best efforts, some dust will infiltrate other areas of your home.
Removing old resilient flooring

You can lay new resilient tiles and sheet goods over many old resilient floors, as long as they´re in sound condition. But what if your present linoleum, vinyl or asphalt tile floor has seen better days, or you want to dig down to handsome wood flooring that you know lies underneath?

To remove sheet flooring, start at a corner and soften the adhesive with heat from an electric iron turned to its lowest setting. Once you´ve pried an edge loose with a putty knife, you may discover you can peel up the flooring in a single piece or as a series of strips made by slitting the material with a utility knife. If this doesn´t work, iron and peel your way across the floor.

Also use an iron to loosen the adhesive under tiles. After you´ve pried a few loose, try lifting the others with a garden spade. Scrub away any adhesive that remains on the floor with steel wool and a solvent such as paint thinner.

CAUTION: Never sand an old resilient floor. Many contain asbestos fibers. Sanding could raise deadly dust.
Installing underlayment

If an existing floor is badly worn or surfaced with wood planks or strips, you need to smooth the way for resilient flooring by putting down underlayment. Sheets of plywood or particleboard eliminate surface irregularities that could show through your new floor. Underlayment also raises a floor´s level by a fraction of an inch, so you may have to plane the bottoms of doors and provide transition strips between the new floor and other materials.

Lay out underlayment panels so their longer dimension crosses floor joists, and stagger the joints between panels so that at no point do four corners come together. Arrange the panels so that their edges meet over the joists. Space the panels 1/16 inch apart, the thickness of a matchbook cover. Secure the underlayment with 8-penny ring-shank or cement-coated flooring nails. These types grip better than ordinary nails and won´t pop up through the finished floor. Drive nails into the joists every 6 to 8 inches. Also nail the ends of panels between joists into the subfloor.

Finally, fill all hammer dents and any space between panels that is wider than 1/4 inch with floor leveling compound. Use a putty knife to pack compound into the depression and scrape it level with the surface of the underlayment.
Installing resilient tile

Resilient floor tiles are a do-it-yourselfer´s dream. They´re much easier to handle than cumbersome sheet goods, come with complete installation instructions, and often a self-stick adhesive backing.

Prepare a floor for tiles as you would for any resilient material, putting down underlayment if the manufacturer´s instructions call for it. Next, locate midpoints on opposing walls and snap chalk lines across each of the room´s dimensions. Adjust these, if necessary, so they intersect at a 90-degree angle. Now dry lay tiles from the intersection to each of the room´s walls. If, when you reach the walls, you discover that you will have to cut tiles there by more than 50 percent, shift the tiles - and their starting lines - by half a tile width. This assures that you will end up with uniform and pleasing border rows at opposite ends and sides of the room. Start laying tiles at the lines´ intersection, working outward pyramid fashion. With self-stick tiles you simply peel off a paper backing, position the tile, and kneel on it as you ready the next one. Some tiles still require a separate adhesive, which you apply with a brush. Don´t slide either type of tile into place. Instead, butt its edges against adjacent tiles, gently lower it and press firmly.

When you have to cut a tile to fit up against a wall, lay one tile squarely atop the last full one in that row. Place another flush against the wall and use its opposite edge as a straightedge to mark a cut line across the second tile. Cut tiles with a utility or linoleum knife.
Time frame

Sanding and refinishing a wood floor will put a room out of commission for a minimum of five days, and as much as a week if you choose to stain or apply more than two coats of finish. Budget one day for prep work, a second for sanding. Applying stains and finishes takes only a few hours, but you must wait overnight between applications and another 24 hours before you can use the room.

In contrast, you can lay at least most of the resilient tiles needed for the same size room in a single day, with perhaps part of a second for trimming around the edges. Sheet vinyl goes down fast too, though you´ll need a second set of hands to help maneuver it into place. In a small kitchen or bath the two of you can probably cut a template and install the vinyl in a single day. For a larger room that requires seaming, add a second day. A big advantage of a resilient flooring project is that you can walk on it right away and don´t need to declare the room off-limits for any longer than the time you´re actually working on it.