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Easy maintanence and child friendly Hardwood floors?

5K views 11 replies 9 participants last post by  dc1987 
#1 ·
I was wondering if there is any type of hardwood floors that would be easy maintenence and child friendly and I guess what I mean by child friendly is simply that they don't scratch easily. I always wanted hardwood floors in my first home. I just purchase my first house and I will be doing a lot of remo. As I said, I always wanted hardwood floors but with a two-year-old girl, I am not sure if hardwood is the way to go. I guess the alternative would be tile.

What do you guys recomend?
 
#2 ·
poly will protect your hardwood from scatching .... I wouldn't worry too much... your daughter isn't going to handle knife/hammer/nails/...etc. types of stuff... for her to damage the floor... is quite difficult to be honest...

I found those hardwood which is prestain/poly though, seems has less poly than those hardwood where builder apply poly themselves...
 
#3 ·
In our newer house (4 year old house, we're the 3rd owners and just moved in this past summer), we have hardwood in one of the main living rooms and dining area. It's prestain/prepoly "cherry birch" from Home Depot. Nothing too fancy, but it looks nice and so far has been really durable. We have a 2 year old who drops toys and it rarely dents, and the only time it chipped (very small) was when I was dumb enough to drop a metal shelf onto the floor (instead of putting it into the fridge, as I was aligning the fridge shelves at the time). No biggie though.

I'd say your best bet would be to try and teach your daughter to only play with soft toys, or hard toys that have dull corners, in the rooms with hardwood. Sure it won't keep 100% of the damages from happening, but a completely perfect, clean, dent/scratch-free floor is nothing more than an unhealthy obsession when you have kids. ;)

Oh, and we have 2 cats who still have their claws and I have yet to see them scratch the floor at all.
 
#4 ·
This is advice from myself and a wonderful woman who works for Home Depot Flooring, hired originally as an interior designer by Home Depot. She created custom staining for hardwood floors for her new construction homes:
Avoid extremes of dark/light hardwood floor stains. Stay in the middle range and the floor will hide dust, and scratches. Very dark floors show dust and scratches very well.
Very light floors show footprints, anything dark. Middle range hides all. I've had a 1-2 yr old take a wooden stool, turn it upside down, and drag it across the floor...like a push toy. That's the stage they like push toys and pushing things. The above advice is from myself as well. I've had very dark floors and middle-shade floors, both hardwood. The advice is from experience.

Hardwood floors involves daily: keeping grit off by vacuuming, and taking shoes off, walking in socks. The grit under shoes sandpapers the floors over time. Get a rug that can catch and trap the grit from shoes and prevents the dirt from entering inside a mudroom like area where you will keep your shoes, near a door.

I am investigating hardwax oils/natural oils that can be spot maintained to avoid the entire floor from being re-finished.
 
#6 · (Edited)
In the kitchen, I had solid lighter color oak plank flooring put in, ( can't remember the style name - a country style) that had individual 5" wide or so boards arranged. Very nice looking but the spaces where they fit together were uncomfortable on bare feet. I wouldn't do it again. I worried a lot about things that were dropped, even though the oak was tough & I worried about water in the spaces.

My favorite was the teak parquet flooring with a polyurethane coating. I had it sanded & re-stained & the polyurethane put back on every few years. Lots of traffic, pets & even a 55 gal salt-water aquarium! Never warped. Eventually, I could finish it myself. Marble in the bathrooms.

I wouldn't recommend a very dark brown color . . . dirt shows too easily.

Personally, I think I would go with linoleum in the kitchen & marble in the bathroom :} Wood & water don't go well together & things get dropped a lot in the kitchen. Have fun!

Btw, I slipped on a tile floor in neighbor's kitchen that they had waxed, & hit my head hard! Ow!
 
#9 ·
The engineered flooring that I put down has Aluminum Oxide dust and 7 layers of UV Cured urethane on it. I believe coatings like this are pretty common on any good quality flooring. Nothing is scratch proof, but it is scratch resistant. Do your research.
 
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