Questions About Flooring
October 25, 2022 10:41 PM   Subscribe

I am slowly getting my home office redone. Please give me your flooring advice.

1. My understanding is that laminate and sheet vinyl generally offer the best value -- that is, the most durability for the least cost. Is that right?

2. If you have recently been involved with any flooring projects, do you have any estimates for a room of 177 square feet? Please specify what you are including or not. (I will move the furniture myself, and I don't need anything done with baseboards, but the pros should do everything else.)

3. Can you offer any other advice or info on flooring?

4. Background info: The office is mainly me sitting at a desk 40 hours a week. I have a glass mat for the chair. Sometimes the cat or my wife comes in for a while. No one external comes in. But in a few years, it might get somewhat more busy for about six months, with one or two colleagues sometimes. Once in a while, I use the office for something else, such as exercises including light dumbbell work. I expect to retire from full-time work in about 10 years. Then it will likely be a part-time office and part-time multipurpose room. Children will not be in the house. The room is next to a bathroom.
posted by NotLost to Home & Garden (11 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: Clarifying that the baseboards don't need to be replaced. But apparently the remove and reinstall the baseboards?
posted by NotLost at 10:42 PM on October 25, 2022


Response by poster: Also, what "extras" should I expect to need other than the actual vinyl or laminate?
posted by NotLost at 10:45 PM on October 25, 2022


Best answer: You can get higher quality flooring second-hand if it's just for a single room and in a metropolitan area. Tile, marmoleum, etc. Fast, cheap, and quality, pick any two... and you did say you're redoing the room slowly. Call up some scrappy flooring contractors, visit your local house materials thrift shop if you have one (at the very least, you probably have a Habitat for Humanity ReStore), check Craigslist, etc.

The reason I'm advocating for quality is because I'm conflating it with natural materials. The reason I'm concerned about using natural materials is because it's no fun to realize that at the end of its life, your floor is going to end up in the dump or the great pacific garbage patch or something. If it weren't for that, I personally like plastic floors.
posted by aniola at 11:25 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


I can give you some ideas of Bay Area prices: I think I paid $6-7 a sqft for a fancy laminate, and more like $8 for what I consider to be decent engineered hardwood, material cost. Laminate is cheaper, and won't have any issues with moisture, but the thin stuff is noticeably cheaper when you walk on it. Hardwood looks more like actual wood but you shouldn't mop it or generally soak it with water.

I can't tell you what the install cost will be as it was a part of a bigger project in my case.

The flooring usually comes with a guarantee for longer than you're likely to be in the house, but I suspect it excludes damage by things like chair wheels/dogs/life so I didn't really count it in the equation beyond 'we trust what we made'.

I've heard repeated warnings that the big box stores charge more than they should for low grade product, and the easiest way to compare quality is by its thickness. Thicker is better, and for engineered hardwood the thicker the veneer layer (the wear layer - the actual hardwood over the plywood) the better.

Yes, they normally replace the baseboard, and you will need to paint it afterward as well. Check Home Depot for the baseboard prices. I used Sherwin Williams Superpaint, which seems to be a decent contractor grade latex paint. Prices at S-W vary dramatically but either find a discount period (30% off is common over major holidays) or get a contractor deal (with their phone number; a contractor that does a lot of painting it seems like you can beat 50%, ask anyone you know who has had work done recently if they had a code you can borrow). You probably won't use all of a gallon, and for 177sqft I would guess not even close.

My remodeller expected me to buy the floor and paint but not the baseboard. Check with your fitters what they expect.

It is not impossible to do this yourself if you want to save cost and have some skills with a saw and the patience; YouTube is where I would start if you want to go down that path. There are lots of professionals who like to show their skills and amateurs who like to document their work.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 11:56 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


You can either lift and replace the baseboard, or use quarter round (or other shoe) moulding to cover the gap.

Typical flooring costs are $4-$10 per square foot. You should be able to find decent vinyl or laminate in the $4-$6 per square foot range, but you might need to look for it to get the best quality material you can. If it's in plank form you can fit it yourself as a floating floor. It's apparently not too difficult. This is a decent YouTube instructor. I think I have read the floor installation is around $4 per square foot, but I'm sure someone else will be along shortly with a better estimate.
posted by plonkee at 1:50 AM on October 26, 2022


I put in Coretec LVP in a space that was about 475 sq ft in 2019. It is in a couple of kids bedrooms and my office and I have been very happy with it in terms of look, feel and durability.

I paid about $4/sq ft for a higher end LVP in 2019 - it looks more like $9-10 now. All in with installation labor, underlayment, quarter round was $4k. They had to pull out some carpet as a part of the work.
posted by jeoc at 4:21 AM on October 26, 2022


I'm guessing this office is in a residential space, and not commercial?

I just removed cheap click together vinyl and replaced it with 3/4 solid red oak. Price was $12 per square foot. Price included removing and trashing a very old oak floor that was not salvageable.

The cheap vinyl was only 5 years old and was not in good shape - scraped and bubbling due to moisture. Some seams were coming apart.

The red oak will last 100 years. The other rooms in the house have red oak that is 90 years old - and except for some seams gapping due to settling of the house, they are as good as new. I know of no other flooring material that (with occasional sanding and resealing) will last as long and not end up in a landfill.

As long as moisture is not an issue, and you have a mat to protect against moving chairs equipment, I would suggest actual wood. It also allows a future owner to repurpose for living space easily.
posted by sol at 7:16 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I just paid $4 a sq ft for tile installation - materials were extra, probably about $1 a sq ft (like $1000 I think for 1,000 sq ft), and tile was extra.

Extra is things like floor scraping, floor leveling, and subfloor, depending on the floor you are laying..

Yes, I would say that stick-on vinyl is the most economical, easiest to clean surface, considering you can get it for as little as $1 a sq ft and install it yourself if you are reasonably handy. Lots of people don't like the look - which is a fair complaint.

I also agree that it's lifespan is not nearly as long as is written on the box, especially in high-traffic areas. They have like 25 year warranties, but in general it only looks 'new' for about 5-10 at most. And it goes from 'new' to 'bad' without much middle transition.

If you get thin planks, they are easy to remove with steam, and Cragistlist away to someone else to use. The square tiles or thicker ones are far harder to remove, and you will break too many from them to be reused, unless of course you are the most careful person in the world.

Tile and wood are generally more durable, but each have real downsides, including the expense, wear (especially in an office environment or gym environment), and potential for water damage.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:38 AM on October 26, 2022


Given the light foot traffic expected, you might consider cork flooring. It's not quite as durable as vinyl plank or hardwood but it's easy to clean, sound- and temperature-insulating, just as easy to install as any other type of tongue-and-groove plank flooring, and made of natural materials. Bamboo is another option; it's more durable than cork but not as insulating. It's been 6 years since I bought cork flooring so of course the prices aren't very relevant any more, but at the time I paid just over $4 per square foot and that did not include installation, the price of which was included in a much larger renovation project so I don't have that information, sorry.
posted by mezzanayne at 11:58 AM on October 26, 2022


We have previously had Pergo-type laminate flooring, and there's one thing to watch out for: if water gets in/underneath, it will get absorbed into the floor and it will ruin the material. You may or may not be able to repair the damage by replacing some strips. If you go this route, buy extra material, so that years from now, if you have to repair something, you still have some material from the same batch.
posted by StrawberryPie at 5:11 PM on October 26, 2022


Response by poster: Thanks for all the info. Apparently, the price I was quoted was reasonable. I am going to look into second-hand flooring.
posted by NotLost at 8:30 PM on October 27, 2022


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