Lake House Flooring

[smokedog2]

With 81 lurkers someone will have a suggestion.

My wife hates the carpet at the lake. Muddy kids & dogs over 8 years has about destroyed it.

She wants tile throughout the house. The whole thing, including replacing the vinyl in the kitchen now. She is on a mission.

It is in reality a doublewide trailer (yea here in Ohio, we have so many lakes, we put trailers on some of them). I believe that the floor over time will shift enough to crack tile – a lot. I also think the cement base and tile would raise the floor too much for the cabinet toe gaps, etc. I also think I could have the carpet cleaned 5 times a summer for 10 years and break even.

Vinyl tears so she does not want that. I hear they make some solid vinyl that looks like wood or tile, but I am not making the sale.

A wood square surface has been nixed because they show wear and if a swimsuit is left on it for a week, the pressed wood will expand.

She also wants me to install the floor, well me and a couple other lake house regulars. Their wives are contributing to this fiasco. I am not wild about working my ass off this summer to lay a floor from one end of a POS trailer to the other.

If I get pushed into a corner I am considering SnapStone. How does the “soft grout” hold up and is the installation ease worth the price?

Has anyone used it? Does anyone have a sellable recommendation?

Eight years ago we furnished the place with a U-haul and a weekend of hitting garage sales. Now she wants new couches as well. I think she missed the whole economic collapse memo.

[BensonWdby]

If you really want to get rid of carpet - take a look at high pressure laminate. The make some stuff that is very tile-like looking but requires no concrete underneath, and no grout. You can find some stuff in faily large sections.

Installation is not as easy as they make it sound at Home Depot - but my wife and I did out front entry, and laundry area by ourselves in about 8 hours.

Here is part of the result - we hav actually had people believe it is tile until we tell them otherwise.

http://bensonwdby.home.comcast.net/~...e/DSCN1537.JPG

If you look at the top of the photo you can see how wide each piece is - and they are about 46 inches long. Other styles are narrower. If you do it right the seams are virtually invisible.

[wolfeman131]

Benson - that looks very nice!

SD2 - maybe Sled or Tazz (who are the construction czars here) will have a better experienced opinion, but I have a similar situation as you and am putting down laminate wood floors this spring. My main residence has Wilsonart laminate that has held up to EVERYTHING over the last 10 yrs. I'm not going that high end material in the lake house as it was something like $8/sq ft installed.

I am going with the laminate floor as it "floats" and therefore I think it will work better in the modular home and sort of move with it. I know that you must put down the foam underlayment or it sounds funny when you walk across it. These floors are fairly easy to install b/c you don't have to be perfect around the edges as you leave a little gap for the float and cover that with some 1/4 round molding. Good luck whatever way you go!

[Sled491]

Dave, I think your project is SD2's answer. Won't crack with movement, should stand up to moderate water exposure. Maybe not the easiest to install, but still easier than tile. Look is amazingling similar and will fool most people. I'm not sure how big the double wide is, but shouldn't take more than a couple weekends at a do it your self pace. My only complaint is the hollow sound it makes when you walk on it with shoes.

I'm personally doing a 2 x 18" tile deep boarder around the whole front part of the room and then filling the void with solid hickory flooring. I am also doing the hall and main floor bedrooms with the same hardwood, putting a dark carpet up the stairs and in the MB/Lost area only.

Trying to prevent the moldy smell that will come with a house that is closed up several months of the year and hopefully make it cleaner and hypoallergenic.

[smokedog2]

BW - who made that HPL?


tx

SD2

[Mikey]

One suggestion that hasn't come up would be Cork? It seems to wear well from the few that i know that have it.

[BensonWdby]

We got ours at home Depot - Dupont Tuscan Stone. Not exactly cheap at the time, but competitive with other good flooring options. It came with foam backing so no need for additional pad. I think it is much easier than tile - and it is removable with no tools depending on what you put on top of it (furniture, cabinets, etc...) .

Defintiely a two person job when working over spans of more than 8 feet, because you need to lock up an entire row before you connect to the previous row.

We had to remove old sublfloor because we had removed slate tile and it was old particle board that had been wet and had grout remnant on it.

We are real happy with the look and the wear seems pretty good so far. But it is still a photo-finish of sorts. That means that the image is just on the surface, so if you ding it you may remove image and expose inner material. Much like tile in that respect. The only way around that that I am familiar with is inlaid vinyl - very $$$ - I think.

[patrick232]

I would go with the vinyl that is setup with them over lapping on each other. It's about twice as thick. I would check out panel town, since you are in Dayton.

[jmvotto]

I second the laminant installed the same as Bensonwdby

We put the tuscan stone from HD in our kitchen at the lake house. Looks and works great. takes a little patience, my wife and i did it in a weekend. about 10 by 12 ft. held up great to wet feet from the lake 3 kids and the 3 labs.

my .02

[eseebeck]

Tile is a good idea, but your right it is a double wide. the snap stone is good, the pliable grout is easy to do and holds up well, but snapstone is expensive. I remodeled a 75 year old cottage with oak hardwood that had been painted gray, I am assuming that it was just porch and floor paint.

I repainted the floor after replacing a few of the bad boards, it looked great and seems to have worn very well. I liked the look so much, well my wife did, that we replaced our porch carpet with 8" wide pine plank flooring and painted it gray, it looks very cottagy my honey says.

lot of luck, if she wants tile, I think you'll spend a couple weekends on your knees. Either tiling the floor or begging her not to make you tile it.