Bamboo Flooring, a series of links and thoughts

[aldersprig]

We're going to replace the floor in most of the downstairs the entire house, eventually, but first is likely to be the dining room-living room-card room area.

We've been considering bamboo floor, for strength/aethetics.

Is it really green? from Treehugger
This site is really cranky.

A buyer's guide from Popular Mechanics

and a color option from Lumber Liquidators.

We know we're going to go with wood (or grass, wood-like, at least) in these areas, with throw rugs. We're thinking of doing radiant heating under the floors, since we have to replace all the floors eventually anyway. it'll be in the reddish end of things, because we both prefer it, and it will not be oak or pine, because neither of us like those for floors (I grew up with pine floors. Just... no).

(some of the links I've found in making this post have made me second-guess doing bamboo, but I still have at least a year to make up my mind).

Do you have wood/bamboo/etc floors? Radiant floor heating? Anything you love or hate about it?

Comments

[purplecat]

We put down bamboo flooring in our kitchen because, among other things, the floor base was really uneven with relatively little option for fixing the unevenness so various floating laminates weren't an option while the bamboo could be glued down. I've forgotten now why we rejected the idea of tiles - possibly just the expense.

At any rate we've been pretty pleased with it. It's worn well, coped with various exciting floods from malfunctioning plumbing and even in the most uneven places is still fixed to the floor (well it wobbles a bit but the edges are still flush together and it looks fine and you only notice the wobble if you stand in the wrong place).

However, it does show the dirt and isn't the easiest floor to clean. This may be less of the problem outside of a kitchen space where the option for exciting combinations of grease and food are lower.

[aldersprig]

hrrm, that is something to keep in mind, as we'd intended to eventually carry the bamboo through into the kitchen, too.

Thank you!