Old post revisited....wood or ceramic tile flooring

[PrairieRose]

I know the trend in new homes is NOT to put wall to wall carpeting throughout. I love the idea of having a clean floor or an easy to clean floor and as I'm sooooo sick of this old carpet that I have I wanna hear more input on what your flooring is.

Do you have wood floors? Do you love/hate them? Why?

Do you have ceramic tile or something like it throughout your house? Love or hate it? Why?

I'm desperately trying to convince dh that we don't want carpeting throughout the living room but honestly on days like today when it's sooooo cold.... you could literally hang meat in our bathrooms......bbbbrrrrhhhh! I can't imagine having it throughout the whole house right now.  I need your input. Tell me what ya have and how you feel about it, pretty please.

 

[QuilterMom]

We have all tile except in the bedrooms. It was that way at our old house as well.

What I hate about it........

- In our old house, we should have picked a smooth top tile. We chose a light colored one that had veins running throughout and dirt and grime got ground into the veins very easily. I could mop the floors, but the tile would still look dirty because of the veins. Only a good old fashioned scrubbing would make it look nice.
- The grout also got dirty very easily even though it was sealed. Between the 3 of us going in and out constantly and the 3 dogs (indoor dogs that would go in and out), the grout didn't have a chance.
- In our current house, we have the same problem (we didn't pick out the tile though and plan to redo the floors - not sure what we'll use though).
- One nice thing about the tile is it helps keep the house cool in the heat, which is most of the year here. When we did get a bit of cold weather in our old house, we would freeze to death - the tile was like ice. I do think the cathedral ceilings didn't help though. In this house we haven't experienced any cold weather yet, but we have regular ceilings so I think that will make a big difference.

[Missy]

I am a biased flooring wife. DH installs. Go wood flooring!! (insert cheerleader icon here) As soon as we can, we are ripping out our carpet and getting hardwood. and where we have vinyl right now we are going to put in tile. I HATE, HATE, HATE carpet. I can't wait to get rid of it all. DH also does install of the serpintine under tile heating

[kimmee]

We had hardwood in our old house and I felt like it was much cleaner - I could scrub the daylights out of it and make it shine. Bruce absolutely hated it !! He said he always stepped on some sort of crumbs and he thought it was cold. The carpet we have now is nice but I wash it every other week and it is wearing out from that - it is only a year old and it was expensive! But the extractor pulls absolutely black water from it everytime I wash and you know no carpet cleaner is good enough to get all of the dirt!!

In our house in Scottsdale, Bob and I laid saltillo tile and it was wonderful!! It stayed clean and it washed so easily (it was heavily glazed). It never showed the dirt - I could vacuum or sweep it and didn't have to do special treatments ( I worked my butt off on the hardwood - constantly stripping, sanding, oiling!!). The big problem with the saltillo though was if you dropped something , the something was a goner!!

[Ellise]

We are having laminate installed next week well in the kitchen & dining room anyway. Bathrooms are tiled. Now to convince DH that we need to do the whole house

[mom2matty]

We have hardwood floors, tile and carpet in our house and if I had to choose one to keep and to replace all the others it would be hardwood flooring. My kitchen and dinning room floors are hardwood and they stay the cleanest in our house.......they are easy to care for and they look so pretty. We have tile in all the bathrooms and the laundry room and then carpet everywhere else. I hate the carpet........I have to vacuum it several times a day.....it is hunter green. My tile gets dirty fast and I am constantly having to scrub it and clean it. I love the wood flooring best and I am desperately trying to get dh to see how much nicer the house would look with all wood flooring.....I almost have him convinced!!

[frugalmel]

I would love to have hardwood. We have berber carpet (yuck!) and vynl in the baths and eat in kitchen. The vynl of course has those little dips in them that NEVER seem clean. My dh said wood floors were to cold and he wanted something warmer under his feet. I think the next house we buy we would love to have either tile or wood with under the floor heat.

This berber carpet sucks. lol It tears up my feet because its rough and its light so it shows the stains. The prev. owners picked it.

[DaisyLady]

We have carpet and ceramic tile everywhere except for the dining room which is hardwood (but I have an antique rug on it).

I hate tile and carpet. The carpet is so hard to keep clean. I am constantly shampooing it. I also hate the ceramic. It is cold, hard on the feet and the grout cracks and falls out eventually.

I would like to have either a wood laminate or hardwood everywhere except the bathrooms and mudrooms. I want to put a good quality vinyl in those rooms but since we will be selling in the next few years I will have to put ceramic in since that is what "everybody" wants. Probably will put in new carpet since it is cheaper than wood. I am not going to spend a lot of money on this place. I'll save it for the "retirement" home we will buy next.

[COUNTRYBUMPKIN]

We have all hardwood floors through our home and I would not trade them for anything All I need to do is swiffer them and do an occasional cleaning with some Murphy's. I do have a large made to order Berber area rug in the family room and one in the wicker room as well. The rest of the rugs(48 of them) are ones that I can just bring to the laundrymat and wash when needed. Having all hardwood floors is much healthier on the lungs as well. You do not have all of the dustmites, etc like you have when you have wall to wall carpeting.