Anyone here have engineered hardwood and big dogs? How badly do their nails scratch it? We just built a new house that has engineered hardwood everywhere. Eventually we want to add a dog to our happy home…although we have different ideas on the appropriate size!
I would really love to get another German Shepherd, but wonder if something that size won’t trash the floors. Anyone have a big dog and non-scratched floors??
My brother’s labs destroyed his wood floor in his house. He said next time it’s either tile or laminate since he’ll keep the dog! I don’t know if his are engineered or not though! He builds custom homes for a living, I’ll ask him what he thinks…
I’m looking at the vinyl planks…my dogs have destroyed my floors, which weren’t in good shape when we bought the house in the first place, but I’m really, really worried about how it will affect resale.
The whole wood to carpet and tile transition is bizarre anyway, so I’m thinking of doing the entry, hall and living room in the vinyl planks and tile in the kitchen. I’m also thinking really seriously about the porcelain wood look planks as well.
My brother is just planning on refinishing the floors when he moves. He did the wood floor for resale but it backfired!
We put in engineered hardwood floors three years ago and we have three big dogs. I’m very pleasantly surprised at how well this floor has held up. The dogs scrambling on it really haven’t left marks, nor have chairs sliding on it or other damage that can be done.
Ugh. I don’t know about smaller dogs, but my two (45 lbs. and 55 lbs.) have scratched the hell out of our engineered hardwoods. But then so did the movers. This type of flooring just isn’t durable at all—a total waste of money, IMHO, and I will never have them again.
I’ll either go with laminate or flagstone next. I might consider real hardwoods (the sort you can refinish), but you would have to pay me to put engineered hardwood in my next house. :no:
I’ve also found mine really hard to clean. They get vacuumed weekly, but I’ve just about given up on mopping them. All that seems to do is spread the dirt around.
Ugh. So far it’s not sounding good for my hopes of a bigger dog. He wants a little dog, but I am a big dog person thru and thru. In my opinion, if it can comfortably sit on my lap, it’s too small! The only thing that may save me possibly is the fact that our floor is handscraped hickory, so it is already distressed. Maybe I could just fill in whatever scratches the dog does with a stain marker…or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
I don’t know about engineered hardwood, but we polyurethaned the heck out of our pine plank floors, which in combination with keeping nails trimmed and blunted acceptably tempers damage to the wood. Largest dog is about 65#. I was worried about damage, too, but it’s been a few years and so far so good.
The pine plank was discovered after uncovering 150 years of layers of tile, newspaper, masonite, and ???. It was like an archeological dig, one news article was about the discovery of Pluto.
We have 100 year old oak hardwood upstairs, new (expensive) engineered hardwood through the main house and new plain oak hardwood in the rec room.
The 100 year old floors have held up best!! Would not even know we had dogs. The engineered hardwood has lots and lots of surface scratches but no actual grooves/damage to the wood (you can basically only see the surface scratches in certain light). The plain hardwood has been scratched to heck.
We have two dogs - 55 and 50 pounds.
I have engineered wood and although I love the looks, my 95 lb has really scratched it in the two years since it’s been installed. Do NOT believe the wood salesmen… and now that my dog is recovering from ACL surgery, we have dozens of mats all over the house to prevent him from slipping when he gets up… so damaged floors and mats…we sure won the lottery! But I hate the look and feel of laminate!
Our potential new house has cheap laminate all the way through, all 4800 square feet of it…and I love it, don’t have to worry about it and the dogs won’t be tearing it up… if I didn’t have dogs I would get real wood but I like my dogs more! 
Now that I think about it, we have 100 year old wood floor in the living room of our current house and it’s held up just fine to the dogs and apparently everything else that has happened to it in the last 100 years… it’s in pretty good shape, especially compared to my brother’s floors!
It depends on the wood, the type of claws, and the abrasives that get on the floor. A friend had solid Walnut, and her daughter’s GSD/Shar Pei (wrinkled forehead so I guess Shar Pei) mix had shorter claws, and in spite of carpet runners and padded carpet protectors the floors were scratched to pieces. If kitty litter tracks, or if there’s a lot of sand tracked in from outdoors you can have bad scratches also. Within a year of move in the Walnut floors were trashed, and also sun faded in places too.
The vinyl plank can look very good, and I’m thinking about it when I replace the bath/kitchen/dining sheet vinyl. Google images of vinyl plank floor and you’ll see how nice it looks. I do like the type that has glue under the entire plank, instead of the edge glued type.
In my previous house I had Meadowbrook Oak by Pergo, and it was about 8 mm thick, with a built in unlay for sound deadening. I really liked it, and because of the sound control built into it, I only had to get the cheap vinyl rolls for moisture control. It depends on the quality of installation, but it held up very well, and in a two year period there wasn’t a mark on it from the dog. However, the dog hated to walk on it, so I put cheap remnants of sheet vinyl, and I used area rugs on walk ways, but when he walked on the floor (he didn’t mind the laminate in his last year) he never left a mark.
[QUOTE=Calico;7182545]
The pine plank was discovered after uncovering 150 years of layers of tile, newspaper, masonite, and ???. It was like an archeological dig, one news article was about the discovery of Pluto.[/QUOTE]
So have you named any of your critters “Pluto” then? 
[QUOTE=LauraKY;7182496]
I’m also thinking really seriously about the porcelain wood look planks as well.[/QUOTE]
After much discussion and many trips to the store we are going with this. Most of the house is already tile. We are putting this in: http://www.arizonatile.com/OVER-SERIES-P981.aspx 8" x 40" and 4" x 40".
We didn’t want the added worry and maintenance of wood. Here is hoping it looks great.
I refinished the original wood flooring in the rooms that it was salvageable. I did ALL the work myself. The only damage is when our 22 lb dog chewed a 1"x5" gouge in the office floor while gnawing away on a nyla bone. It’s also deep, even with refinishing it will still be noticeable. Plus it’s in an area that covering with a rug looks odd(too close to the door). Since we are possibly knocking down some walls to turn one half of the room into a half bath and the other half added to the kitchen, I just haven’t bothered with it.
I prefer to use enduring hardwood; my dog fortunately can’t damage it:) I order stuff in Demyanovskie Manufactures.
My Experience with Refinishing Old Hardwood Floors
We totally restored 1890’s home. It has FABULOUS original wood floors. The floors in the dining room have 4 different kinds of wood, something I totally fell in love with. Oddly, it never occurred to me that a dog could scratch the floors.
We totally refinished all the floors with the same polyurethane product the professionals use to do gym floors in schools. It is not cheap, stinks to high heaven, takes 2 coats and 1-2 weeks to do. As far as maintenance goes, in 50 years you re-sand and put another light coat down. The floors are so shiny they always look wet and look exactly the same as the day they were done - almost 9 years ago now.
Since we moved in, we have had a 60# and now a 80# lab mix and no matter what they do or how long their nails, nothing. So, what you use makes all the difference.
Not sure about engineered, but we built a brand new house with hickory floors (and spent hours at the flooring store “scratching” samples with the associate to see what was the hardiest) throughout and a year and a half later, they look like crap thanks to our two goofy Boxers. Planning on ripping it out in another year or two and replacing with the hardwood tile planks instead. Wood + Claws = disaster
I think we have a troll resurrecting a thread to advertise!
I have laminate on my floors and 3 big dogs, this flooring (Pergo) has held up over 18 years with zero scratches. These girls run around here like psychos and do slide stops across it. 18 years, 9 big dogs tearing around here over those years. I think it’s made of kryptonite!
I swear by laminate. I’m sure there are newer types and other brands that are just as hardy. This stuff is in-dog-structible!
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