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What is your guys opinion on flooring for upstairs. Laminate wood flooring (like a pergo) is a lot cheaper than carpet but we have to install it ourselves. Carpet is more expensive but installed. We don't mind doing the installation for the laminate ourselves but would a wood laminate look cheap upstairs? Do you think most buyers would want carpet and that I should suck up the extra couple hundred dollars? One way or another we're in desperate need of new flooring upstairs! What's better for resale value do you think? I'm undecided.
I wouldn't buy Pergo. (I am extraordinarily familiar with Pergo.) There are other wood-look flooring options at better prices -- either laminate (like Pergo, but not the Pergo brand) or vinyl planks.
If you have cats or dogs, I would not install carpet. Engineered hardwood (we found it at LumberLiquidators -- ask if they have any special deals -- for less than Pergo) would be great.
If you don't have pets, I'd stick with carpets in the bedrooms.
I would do high quality carpet with high quality padding, or true hardwoods in bedrooms (I personally would prefer carpet). I would not do laminate of any kind. I do think some of the new vinyl planks/tiles look pretty good when done right, but again, would only use them in kitchen or maybe other downstairs areas, but not bedrooms.
There are big differences in laminate quality - the stuff with two printed "planks" on each board almost always looks awful and fake and commonly will start to chip at the seams. The laminate with narrower boards and especially with beveled edges can be difficult to distinguish from wood. Thickness and padding makes a big difference, especially in terms of noise. If the laminate you are looking at is cheaper than carpet, I suspect its probably pretty low quality and probably wont look very good for very long.
While replacing a visibly worn out floor can be good for resale value, the choice between new carpet and new laminate will not really increase resale price because your maximum price per square foot will be set by that of the appraisal comps. However, laminate when cared for can outlast carpet so if you are not selling right away, laminate may be a better bet.
However, there are some drawbacks to laminate, especially in a bedroom. Some people complain about laminate in a bedroom due to the feeling of "coldness" on bare feet. If you will walk over it with wet feet like coming out of the shower it can be very slippery and can be easily damaged by standing water. The biggest issue is actually noise because laminate transmits sound very well, so even minor sounds like house mechanicals and obviously walking on it will be a lot louder than carpet, and noises will tend to echo as well. So if you are a light sleeper you should bear this in mind.
I always expected carpet in bedrooms, but bought our house with all wood floors and love it. If you get rugs that are large enough you get the benefit of having both types of flooring. We have throw rugs beside the bed that are easy to clean. (The usually have a dog sleeping on them.) Our house smells a lot better without carpet since we have pets.
I would get what YOU wanted and not worry about resale, then. Google "vinyl planks" and "gardenweb," and you'll find a lot of info about vinyl planks from people who have installed them. They may fit your needs perfectly. They are $1.07 a square foot and you install them yourselves. They look very much like hardwood floors and don't have the noise or water avoidance issues of laminate. I'd get the lighter oak color (not dark or reddish oak) because it doesn't show dirt like the darker colors do, and they look more like traditional hardwood.
I was thinking laminate might be a good way for us to go because my 100 pound lab isn't very gentle on the carpets. We're tight on cash so either way we would be going for the budget flooring and I think budget laminate might hold up better than budget carpeting. I just don't want buyers to be horrified by a laminate in the rooms! But then again, we bought the house with disgusting carpet and I think anything we put in is better than what we have right now =)
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