S/O - Anyone have Pergo floors?

[sunshine873]

The what would you do with $5,000 question reminded me that I wanted to ask about Pergo. Anyone have it? Do you like it?

Our current scenario: Builder grade hardwood & carpet in our large open area (foyer, dining room, living room.) 15 month old DD, 2 black labs (who have scratched our hardwood to oblivion.) The carpet is beyond repair. It's time for a change. I can't imagine that we'll be here more than a few more years. We want to do something that we can enjoy, but will be durable and still in good shape/look good when it comes time to sell.

We've thought about replacing the carpet. It's still somewhat of an option. But we're really leaning towards removing the carpet and the destroyed hardwood and replace them both with Pergo. We feel like it's something we could do on our own, it would be reasonable in cost (always a concern) and it would be durable. A few friends have told me hardwood would be better for resale, but it's a guarantee that we'd have to re-finish it before selling. Who wants to go into it knowing that? Maybe the family buying the house will have 2 dogs and kids and like the idea of Pergo too.

Anyone have Pergo or something similar? Do you like it? How do you clean it, etc?

[egoldber]

If hardwood is standard for your home price point in your area, I would not replace hardwood in a main living space with Pergo.

IMO Pergo is not that durable. If your dogs trashed the hardwood, I think they will trash the Pergo and at least wood can be refinished.

[Penny's Pappa]

ITA with egoldber. I would not replace hardwood with Pergo, but that's because I LOVE my hardwood floors. They're beautiful.

We refinished our hardwood floors the day we got possession of the house. It was time consuming and labor-intensive, but it was not that difficult. It's totally within the reach of a DIYer.

How bad are your floors? It sounded to me like you're just talking about surface scratches from your dogs' claws? You many not even need to go all the way down to the wood for that. That may just require a light screening and one or two coats of polyurethane. Depending on the size of your space, that could be done in a weekend.

ETA: Refinishing was not overly expensive either. We did our entire first floor (~1100sq ft) - stripped, sanded, stained, sealed - for around $2000.

[cckwmh]

we have 2 bigs dogs,a cat, and kids and replaced our carpet and some hardwood with new hardwood. we spent a lot of time talking to different professionals about what will look the best with the dogs. we had prefinished, stained, oak in our dining room previously that took a beating from the dogs. We went with unfinished hardwood and had it finished naturally (no stain) and used a satin finish. it is more difficult to see the scratches with a satin finish in comparison to a glossy finish. we also went with the natural color of the wood instead of a stain because scratches are more noticable on stained wood. we love it and have received many complements on the finish. around here it is more common to have a glossy finish on the wood, so our house is a little different, which I like. hopefully we will not need to refinish it before we move, but are willing to do it if we have to.

[lowrioh]

We have Pergo in our family room (1960's ranch) that was put in by the previous owners. It is a few years old and it still looks brand new. It is pretty easy to clean (we just vacumm and then mop) and I haven't noticed any scratches yet.
My parents put pergo through out their kitchen, family room and dining room and they have been very happy with it. They have a darker wood color and I prefer it to the light ash color we have. They have a small dog, a large golden lab grand-dog and 3 pretty active granddaughters who are at the house pretty often and I haven't seen any scratches yet. They've had it for about 3-4 years.
As far as resale, I guess it depends on where you live. In our neighborhood, most of the houses were built in the 30's and 40's and hardwoods are the standard on the first floor. If I walked into one of them and saw Pergo it would be a turn off. I've been to newer houses (1970's and 80's) that have pergo on the first floor living area and I thought that it looked nice...probably since I was expecting and orange shag rug or builder's grade carpet. Think about what you see in your neighborhood and if it would go with your house.

[daniele_ut]

I wouldn't replace a hardwood floor with Pergo. REAL Pergo, not just off-brand laminate, is fairly expensive, but you don't have the same advantage for resale that you would with a quality wood floor.

We had the trashed original red oak floors in our 1950s house refinished last year when we bought it and we've had numerous people ask if they were brand new.

[Karenn]

We have Pergo in our basement. It looks mostly fine. Even though it doesn't get all scratched up like hardwood, it does have it's own issues. It gets "crushed." We have a couple of places where something heavy was obviously dropped on the floor and the floor got smashed as a result. You can tell, and it looks worse that scratched up hardwoods imo. I've heard that you can replace a single section of Pergo, but I don't know how to do that. I do like the Pergo, particularly for the basement, and I'd pick it over vinyl or some of the other options, but I'm not sure I'd put it in my upstairs formal living room.

[jenmcadams]

I agree with everyone else that it depends on the price point of your home and what everyone else has in your area if you're concerned about resale. Around here, most people have a combo of real wood and carpet and in our price point, pergo/laminate would be a turnoff. Having said that, we owned a house in Naples, FL for a while and while all of the main living areas had 20" tile, the previous owners (they were flipping the house), ripped up the carpet in all of the bedrooms, painted the concrete floors and put down sisal rugs. We obviously wanted to put something in the bedrooms and did put in a higher end wide-plank laminate flooring from a company called Quick Step. We did all four bedrooms and it wasn't too expensive or too difficult. We only lived in the house for 10 months before we sold it, but it wore well (we have two 90lb dogs) and looked pretty nice. I think it helped that it was wide plank w/ grooves and looked more like real wood than pergo/laminate. The planks had a cool grain to them and it ended up being a big positive for us at resale. At the time (5 years ago), Quick Step was way more expensive than other laminates, but we were able to order everything online (I think maybe from iFloor) and got it for pretty close to the same price as we would have paid for Pergo.

If you do decide to go with laminate flooring, I highly recommend spending extra $$ on a quality subfloor padding (we went with the middle grade of what was offered and were glad we hadn't gone cheaper)...one thing that people typically complain about with laminate flooring is a clicking sound when you walk on it. You can address this problem somewhat by having better padding underneath the planks.

[infomama]

We have about 1000sq ft or more of Pergo in our house and we love it. I also love the look of hardwood but for us, Pergo is the best fit. we live in the country and have two dogs and it still looks great after years and years of abuse.

[bubbaray]

Ditto the PPs -- in our price point, Pergo would probably be a turn off. And, yeah, "real" Pergo is about the same price as real hardwood -- its expensive. If I wanted laminate flooring, I would go with Pergo though, its supposed to be more durable.

What about nice slate tiles?

[JTsMom]

We have a high-grade Mohawk laminate throughout our first floor. You can see a little of it in the pics here:
http://www.windsorpeak.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=350379&highlight=backsplash

While I love hardwood, I knew that it would get trashed in our home in no time flat, and I hate having anything that I have to fuss over, or stress about. We could have had the builder do distressed hardwoods, but it would have blown our budget out of the water, and I didn't love the options they had. Choice #2 was only do a couple of rooms, and pay for an outside contractor. Didn't love that option either. Choice #3 was do our own laminate, and do the whole first floor, and that's what worked for us.

I will say, it is not a super fast and easy project, and the way we were able to get as high of a grade as we did was mainly b/c we used someone's employee discount, and picked it up at the factory. It cut the cost by more than 1/2- I think retail was more than $6 or $7 a sqft. without padding. We also bought the upgraded pad.


There is NO clicking sound when we walk on it. None. It looks pretty close to hardwood, imo, especially b/c the type we chose was an individual plank style w/texture. Of course, it took a lot longer than the 3 plank style b/c it's just a lot more pieces to put in, but it was worth the effort. Everyone who has come through has complemented us on our "hardwood", so I think it passes well. DS has put it to the test, and there is not a single scratch so far, even after dragging furniture across it.

Before we moved into this house, we had a rental with really cheapo laminate, and I would NEVER chose that. It scratched like crazy, was really plasticky, and just looked horribly fake to me. I will stand by my better stuff though. I can't remember who, but someone else here mentioned that they had the same stuff, and that they love it too.

[Tanya]

We have Pergo in our kitchen and it's been there since before we moved in about 13 years ago. I think it holds up really well to dogs.

I have builder grade hardwood in the entryway, then that leads to the Pergo kitchen. My dogs would race to the door when the doorbell rang. Pergo looks fine, hardwood all scratched up.

However, before we moved in, the dishwasher leaked and ruined a section of the Pergo which the previous owners had replaced. Then, right before we moved in, the icemaker line from the frig leaked and raised some seams in the floor. Then, a year or two after we moved in, the power went out and I didn't have the check valves in place for my aquarium and it drained onto the floor and raised some more seams.
So, I wouldn't use Pergo where there could be water.

I really like the durability of it otherwise, especially for dogs. I probably wouldn't put it in our house now that we are thinking about selling though, but I'd totally put it in a house I was planning on staying in.