Hardwood floor help
When we bought our house it had/has cheap hardwood floors and laminate look hardwoods in the kitchen. I want to replace all to match BUT we have dogs...what is the strongest pre engineered wood floor?
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Wood hardness is determined by the Janka Scale, so when you're shopping for floors ask what the rating is of the floors you're interested in. (Anything over 1200 is considered durable, but the scale goes as high as 5060) There is a lot of misinformation out there on which wood is hardest, the Janka scale is globally recognized scale that the flooring industry uses. Here's a list in descending order of hardness of woods that are used in flooring, with their ratings.
Brazilian Walnut/Ipe 3684
Brazilian Cherry Lite 3680
Brazilian Teak 3540
Stranded/woven Bamboo 3000
Red Mahogany 2697
Mesquite 2345
Honduran Rosewood 2200
Sweet Birch 1470
Hard Maple 1450
Natural Bamboo 1380
White Oak 1360
Ash 1320
Red Oak 1290
No matter what choice, make sure the wear layer is at least an 1/8" thick, this will cost more but will enable you to refinish and repair more often if needed. Also, engineered has a distinct advantage over the vast majority of finish-in-place flooring, in that it uses aluminum oxide finishes, which are known for there high durability. Lastly, if you select a distressed and hand scraped floor the wear and tear will be far more forgiving. I have 2 big dogs and my prior home had this kind of floor and it worked very well.
-Steve
-Steve