So, this is nothing more than a personal bias so take it with a truckload of salt. Snap together, or laminate flooring has a lot of advantages, but I hate them. Personally, the one's I have walked on sound like you are walking on hollow plastic. I'm sure others have had different experiences, that is just my experience. Whenever I have walked on one of these floors, I just picture a plastic looking simulated wood grain in my head. I know that they look better than that, but that is the image I get because of the sound they make.
I think the engineered floors are second to actual hardwood. Since they are partly real hardwood on top of a plywood substrate, they feel and sound more like hardwood than does a laminate. If this is any indication, a sighted neighbor of mine recently ripped out their laminate and put in hardwood because after three years, they said the laminate looked like crap. They said that you get what you pay for. They put in cheap laminate because they thought it looked as good as real wood, but because it was cheap laminate it just didn't hold up. They considered a more expensive laminate but decided that real hardwood was not that much more expensive than a high end laminate. I'm not knocking anyone's choice to use it, just thought I would give folks the other side of the coin if they are thinking about installing a laminate floor. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081
