Flooring for Florida livingroom, diningroom, familyroom, and foyer

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by alsidw

I am buying a house in south east florida and need advice on flooring. The house was built in 2003 on a monolithic slab. There is carpeting in the bedrooms and we have allergies so we want to take it out. The soil is sandy and we do not live on or near the beach, it is just sandy everywhere between I95 and the ocean. The living and bath areas have large light colored tile.
I like the wood look for the bedrooms but I am concerned the sand will eventually get tracked in and the floors will scratch. I looked at HD and Lowes and the laminates and "hardwoods" look like the top is very thin and did not notice much of a clear finish to protect the wood. Other than ceramic/porcelain that will work well will vinyl hold up over time. I heard of a new leather look vinyl tile that looks great. We have no dogs but will be using our rear yard to entertain and I know sand will track in.

Originally Posted by kshe95girl

I live in Central Florida, and there is sand everywhere here.
I have tile and hardwood on my own home, no carpet whatsoever. When we moved into this house, we removed the carpet immediately. There must have been 5 pounds of sand just in the foyer, maybe 25 pounds throughout the rest of the house, it was awful!
I usually advise my clients to do hardwood or tile in the heavy traffic areas of the house, and save the carpet for the bedrooms, where there is less likelihood of sand being tracked in.
In tiled and wood floored areas, I always use large area rugs to cut down on echoing.
Oh, radiant heating? Chances are, you are going to have a monolithic foundation, so you are not going to need radiant floor heaters.

There you go.

[SXN]

I live in SE florida and just installed HW floors in all the bedrooms and hallways connecting them. Left tile in our laundry room and bathroom - basically any place that can get wet. Not sure how you're gonna get so much sand into the house. I live between I-95 and the ocean and never had a problem. Just wipe off your feet on a good door mat before coming inside and take off your shoes as soon as you do.

If it's still a concern, get a hard wood like strand-woven bamboo. It doesn't scratch as easily. I'd also avoid Home Depot, Lowes or Lumber Liquidator flooring. You pay a premium and the quality sucks, not to mention most of it is made in China with who knows how many chemicals are in it. Vinyl plank flooring would get rid of the seams and may be able to withstand the sand better, but it looks and feels cheap.

I had a lot of luck finding a few dealers of eco-friendly hardwod online and had them compete on price. Ending up paying about half what I would have at the big box stores.

[greg42]

If you're concerned about hardwood/laminate holding up, you might want to consider porcelain/ceramic tile that looks like hardwood. The appearance in the pics anyway is hard to distinguish from the typical wood type flooring. Might be big difference in cost though, not sure.