Our house came with glued HW flooring when we bought it. That flooring is 25 years old now and has been refinished once 10 years ago. I has held up pretty good but does have some fading where sunlight hits it in the morning. Some (most?) glued HW is layered wood so it is important to purchase one with a thick top layer that could potentially be sanded several times. We even have it in the kitchen and it has held up well there also. It does have a few deeper dents where we had to slide the fridge sideways to get it into place in front of the island. The only problem area is right in front of the doggy door – we had strong winds & rain this past winter and there is some slight rain damage right under where the doggy door flap opened in the wind…I didn’t even notice it until this summer.
Our office had carpeting so my son and I took that out and replaced it with a floating floor. In general I am not a fan of floating wood floors because they tend to make a hollow, unpleasant sound when I walk on them – my bro-in-law installed this throughout his house and it makes that annoying sound. I put it in our office anyway because I wanted something easy and cheap. Initially it did make that hollow sound but once I finished putting furniture and cabinets on it, the floor settled right in and now makes no sound when we walk on it.
My eventual plan is to put hardwood throughout the house and at that point I’ll have to make some hard decisions…what do I do with the areas that butt up against the existing glued hardwood? Do I try to match the old HW or take out all the wood and start fresh? And what about upstairs? We have had some issues with upstairs tile grout cracking and coming loose, I suspect from the flex in the subfloor. Should I risk glued HW up there or go with something more flexible, perhaps something that is simulated wood? I just don’t know…time will tell.
