We are still waiting on the final thumbs up for the house, but in the meantime, odds are good that wherever we end up we will want to redo the floors (maybe not, but maybe). We have friends who have lived in AZ and they say "don't do tile or wood in the bedrooms, it gets and stays cold". The house we are looking at has tile in the kitchen, utility room, bathrooms, and the large area that was extended from the kitchen area. The living room, dining room, and bedrooms all have carpet. The halls have the lovely parquet flooring. I know we would take up the carpet and the flooring in the hall, right now we are debating wood floors throughout or wood floors in the living room, dining room, hall, and carpet in the bedrooms. Part of me says - uggggg, three different types of flooring? What say you? Does the tile or wood stay too cold?
My next door neighbor has tile in his whole condo and he said in the winter it is cold for about a foot off the floor.
I'm not a fan of tile because it does stay cold and is hard on the feet if standing a long time like in the kitchen. You end up putting area rugs, runners or throw rugs everywhere which become a trip or fall hazard as we age. We have carpet in the bedrooms, tile bathrooms and wood with a good underlayment throughout the rest of the house. If you have allergies you could always do wood in the bedrooms, too. Dust is a problem in the desert and carpets are more difficult to keep clear of it.
Let me know how the wood installation goes if you do it. I want wood but its a bit more involved over concrete. Many good looking laminates now and they are easier to install so I might do that. But I still gravitate to wood for all rooms. I even have it in my bathroom now for 10 years and it hold up fine. And I'm not a meticulous cleaner.
For anyone who watches home sale ads in the paper, one of the standard tag lines is: Tile in all the right places. I always laugh when I see this, what the hell is the "right" place? Now that's kind of tongue in cheek, high traffic areas are typically what they are talking about, and of course those places where we tend to spill or miss the toilet bowl (its a guy thing); well you get the picture. But who's to say what's right or wrong for any given person. Obviously it becomes an individual choice rather than a collective mindset. We have elected to have tile through the entire house with bamboo wood in the two bedrooms and living room. When we bought it, we had carpet in the all the "right places." Imagine our surprise when we took the carpet up and found layers of dirt and dust enmeshed on the floor and the pad underneath. Aggie is spot on; there's a problem with dirt when you live in the desert. Our rock yards are clearly an issue and when you add in pets who track it in, you cannot avoid it. Sure you can vacuum that carpet, but once it penetrates, it does little good. Hard woods and tile allow the vacuum to get it all. If you have allergies, I would avoid carpeting. As noted earlier, grout in tile is sometimes a pain in the butt. We've made our mistakes along the way and live with some of the pocking and discoloring problems. The bamboo is wonderful, but it isn't as durable as we hoped. It shows scratches and cleaning it takes a steamer rather than just a damp mop. Nope, not going back to carpet, we've learned to adjust to do what we need do to take care of it. If we would ever do it again, and someday we might; we'd rip it all out and put down wood look porcelain. There's some that is nothing short of spectacular and when laid on the diagonal and using only a sliver of grout, to give it an authentic wood flooring look, it is stunning. It's easy to clean and holds up really well. For the few places I would worry about getting cold feet (hard to believe someone from Minnesota is saying that), we'd put down small area rugs. And when standing at the kitchen sink, those compression foamed mats are truly wonderful. As I said in another thread, we are pulling all of the carpet out from mom's quad (2 bedrooms, living and dining rooms) and putting in tile. She had a stroke 9 years ago and hates walking on the plush carpeting. She finds the tile to be much more user friendly. While I would always think older people would like carpeting, it just amplifies, it truly is a personal preference and what is easier to deal with.
We stained the concrete at our house. I hate carpet and find it traps way too much dirt here with all our dust and winds. I would do tile if I changed anything.
We have a concrete slab floor which is not altogether even. The underlayment is a rubberized sheet of material placed over the bare slab(not glued) which levels the slab. The wood laminate(made in USA) we selected is tongue and groove so it floats(not glued). We've had it down for a little over a year with no problems. You can see when it needs a once over with a horse hair push broom and a Swiffer dust mop unlike the hidden dirt of a carpet. The bedrooms are small and the carpet can be changed out easily when needed.
Thanks all for the feedback. It may be a moot point with this house, but the info might come in handy on whatever house we end up with.
