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Wondering if anyone has used engineered hardwood here in LOS rather than regular hardwood, and how it is holding up? Price of it seems more affordable than the regular stuff, and everything I read says it's better in humid environments. Any help is greatly appreciated.
are you talking about a floating floor?
Pics of floor type please.
engineered hardwood flooring:
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2013/03/230.jpg
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2013/03/231.jpg
if you mean the laminated stuff, the bettr quality can be good, and look good
I always like real wood though, esp teak
these guys make it in Thailand, so it should be cheap
Hardwood Flooring Manufacturer and Wood Decking producer
Used a lot in Thailand. Quality and costs vary greatly. 300 baht per sq meter on up. The cheap stuff is just that. Cheap low quality and not going to last long.
Proper installation of engineered flooring is critical. Do it wrong and even the most expensive will require major maintenance problems.
Ok.
Firstly despite what people might say it doesn't like wet conditions, bathrooms etc.
Secondly the trick is in working out where to start the job.
Start in the wrong place and finishing up can become an utter bastard.
Trust me my first attempt was looking good until the last few sq meters.
Lay it all out first... and work out how it's all gonna hang together. Once it's down a glued it's a fcker to change.
real wood is much nicer to use
even though the laminate is polyurethaned 7 times, when it scratches it never looks that good again
even when new, it looks like plastic!
real wood can be sanded down after years of wear and come up looking great again
^ and you get that flex that laminate on concrete does not give you. If it was a choice, I'd always go real planks.
That's the main point. It'll never look as good as solid timber planks.Quote:
Originally Posted by DrAndy
the joy of living in Thailand where real wood is cheaper than plastic
Thanks for the opinions. Dr. Andy - I have looked at that Florever website you linked to. I've emailed them back and forth and they are quoting me 1600 baht a square meter. I'm planning on my mother and law speaking to them to see what the price is for a Thai - she's usually quite good at bargaining things down.
Any idea what a new teak wood floor would cost, per square meter or a good place in Chiang Mai to buy real wood floors?
Installed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganesh
you can buy teak parquet from most woodyards, like the one behind the superhighway up the Doi Saket road, town sideQuote:
Originally Posted by Ganesh
they will recommend a fitter
teak planks are very expensive, better find another type of wood; once again, ask at the woodyard to see their selection
we bought a load of new planks for one house and had a carpenter fit, sand and seal them
for another place we bought some beaut secondhand wood planks, a cheaper way to go but needs more time
Haven't looked at current prices for teak tongue and groove planks but will be more than Mai Daeng (redwood). I have Mai Dang in my place. Very nice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganesh
Mai daeng - 1,300 - 1500 baht per s.m.
I've rented a number of nice condos that use engineered wood flooring, and its pretty much like anything else in the world you get what you pay for. The higher end brands (Leo I think from home pro Chiang Mai) was quite nice) the frig was leaking water for two day and no damage was done. Cheaper brands I've seen go to shit in one year from just the humidity.. Good luck
Interestingly enough my team of Thai workers just finished an installation of engineered wood flooring on a job in a fairly large condo here in Bangkok.
It is like anything here, you get what you pay for. If you have lackeys putting the floor in who have no experience with it, you're gonna have nothing but problems. If you buy the cheapest flooring they sell, it’s gonna be the cheapest quality. What it ain't is a real wood floor and it can't be laid like it is or maintained like it is.
The guys I have, measured it all out and came up with a layout which split the cuts on both ends and the sides of the room instead of the usual way of having all the cuts against a "non-visible" wall (one you don't see walkin into the place). They did some incredible work.
The big factor is that the engineered flooring has to be laid significantly smaller than the room. We did this one almost a centimeter and a half smaller overall (about 7mm short on each side). I mean, not a single piece of it can touch a wall anywhere, not where it wraps around a door jamb, not AT ALL, otherwise it’ll buckle when it swells. That's why the baseboard for floating floors is often thicker than the standard centimeter thick stuff. We used base board which was about 13mm thick. It had a nice detail on the top and looked after it was installed, although it did look pretty darned thick lying around on the floor when we first got it delivered. You also need to install it just like the manufacturer suggests, and NOT let the workers take any short cuts with the type of glue, the gluing method, the clamping, etc, or it will suck.
In the job we had to do, once we pulled up the cracked floor tile and got to the rough concrete, it was in terrible condition. By that I mean it was your typical Thai concrete pour full of hi and low spots. We knew this going into the job as they hadn’t even bothered to float the tile level when they laid it way back when. We ended up bringing it all up to one level, (the high points) because there was no way we could grind off that many square meters of the floor. It was just cheaper and faster to float the rest of the floor up. Otherwise you'd have seen the "roll" in the floor as it went up and down thru out the condo. We almost laid the floor OVER the existing tile, but in the end I decided to breaking it out and removing it was the real way to do it. It took more time, and was a lot of stuff to haul off, but the finished job came out top notch.
Some of the engineered floors they have now, can be refinished; not the ones which use counter-top laminate, but the ones which use real wood as the top layer. The one we used came with a little can of the same polyurethane that the floor was finished with so that it could be "touched up" if there were bad scratches in it.
I haven't done any "real wood" flooring, so couldn't comment about the cost versus quality of the two. I would agree, if you can do real wood planking it’d wear better than engineered flooring.
Engineer wood flooring is becoming very popular and common flooring. It is not only cheaper than solids; if made with good quality top veneer,it's hard to tell the difference. It also has good property in terms of high resistance to moisture and therefore highly dimension stable. Reason is the way it is made. Alternating the grain lengthwise and crosswise, made engineer wood highly stable than solid. Look for UG-cured PU and aluminum oxide for extra durability.
There are EW flooring that comes with interlocking gloating mechanism that eliminate adhesive and easy to install. Hope this help.
Try re-finishing a laminate floor (if you believe their 30 year warranty, I have a bridge to sell you). I'm in the business and I won't touch them as far as re-finishing. Laminates are for people that want to save money in the short run on flooring. I can understand customers not wanting to put up with the dust, or customers that have allergies. Unless the floor is for a basement, I explain the advantages and disadvantages of both solid and laminates, both in cost and in appearance. Most people will choose solid pre finished flooring. My preference, and the preference of architects, interior designers and flooring contractors is installing unfinished flooring and finishing it.