So I know this might trigger some of you, but I have a genuine question and welcome a healthy debate. I have hardwood floors part of my main floor and some parts are carpet. The kitchen and entry ways are hardwood, the living space is carpet. We are haviya debate in the house where I want to rip out carpet and add hardwood and get it all sanded and stained. The other opinion is mixing hardwood with engineerer hardwood or LVP. I think that will look horrible because we won't be able to 1. Match the color but 2. The flooring width is going to be different. The other option is to rip it all out and put engineered or LVP. I don't like this either, my opinion is why would we take out hardwood?
Thoughts? What would this do to the home value? Does it matter?
Rip out existing hardwood and replace with LVP or rip out the existing carpet and put in hardwood?
byu/ss5008 inRealEstate
Posted by ss5008
20 Comments
LVP is a low quality product and you should not replace a high quality product (hardwood) with it
Hardwood is superior.
There’s nothing “luxury” about plastic
Different width flooring didn’t bother me as much as I had thought it would. Depending on what width you have, either match it, or buy some some of the width you currently have and mix that into the different width. It’s also okay to have non-matching wood floors.
I agree with others that hardwood is superior. But if you’re dead set on everything matching, LVP is thin, go over the hardwood. Don’t rip out what’s not broken.
Ripping out hardwood for LVP would really cheapen the home. At the very least, just LVP over it so if you ever sell the home, next owners can be thrilled to find hardwood under there.
Had LVP in my last place, glad as hell to have hardwood now.
The crappy flip houses and cheap new builds had LVP.
The custom homes and historic homes had hardwood.
I hate LVP. I’d rather have carpet.
Dont do anything until what you already had was gone.
Outside of a wet area, LVP isn’t a benefit.
Hardwoods are the best from resale as well as character and durability
I literally just read an article an hour ago that 51% of home buyers in the US still prefer hardwood, and would rather have slightly damaged (older) hardwood than any newer alternative flooring option. Apparently this article is in Better Homes & Gardens right now. BTW, if your current hardwood is skinny, aka “gunstock”, they still make that. You may be able to find the same width new as what you currently have. It will be a pain to install, sand and finish-in-place your hardwood, but if you do it right, you’ll only have to do this once in your life in this house. I do recommend that you have all your furniture out of the area when the sanding happens, and tape or plastic wrap all your kitchen cabinet doors shut, or otherwise floor-sanding-dust will get in there. Also be prepared to wash your walls after the project is done, because floor sanding dust will coat the walls too, and that stuff leave yellow stains on things that touch your walls.
Carpet is gross, and why on earth would you replace good wood with plastic?
It depends on your house.
In my little 1100sqft rambler, where I live with pets and chaos, hardwoods would be a nightmare. LVP is more cost effective, has held up with minimal damage, and there’s never weird cracks.
My sister has hardwoods in her house and the gaps are stupid. It needs to be refinished. Sometimes a nail decides to pop up.
If you’ve got a large, luxury house, it might be sensible to do hardwoods.
But if you’re just trying to sell the house? Get the carpets cleaned and put it on the market. Let the next person decide
if hardwood is damaged beyond repair, LVP makes sense financially. Otherwise refinishing preserves value and avoids regret later long term
Spend the money on a sand and refinish.
I would not mix the products and I would not rip out the hardwood to replace it with lvp. I installed LVP in a second beach home and it was fantastic for that but I would never in my regular home. If you are able to add the hardwood and sand and stain, the resale value will be higher. Look around at comparable homes in your area to get an idea of homes w hardwood and without price wise. Flooring consistency is a huge thing for a lot of buyers…as well as the quality.
Put in hardwood
Keep hardwood. Replace old carpet with new carpet or hardwood
Refinish your existing hardwood in place. Fill in the other parts with new hardwood.
In a similar boat, Bruce hardwood most of first floor, carpeted living room at 425 sq ft. Got an estimate in 2020 to replace carpet with hardwood, they wanted $4500 to match the Bruce. Entire first floor is 1800 sq ft, and Bruce HW creaks, makes me think wasn’t installed correctly. Well the sad stained carpet is still there, I’ll get to it eventually 🤣
Don’t do an almost match. Either get hardwood and refinish everything or get a non wood look product.
If you aren’t sure, call a carpet cleaner and have that cleaned, and put the decision off until later this year.