Best dog and water resistant flooring?

I'm located in Ontario, Canada, which means it's cold for a good part
of the year, so tile in the whole house wouldn't be a good thing ...
plus I don't think my wife would like the look of a tiled living room
and bedrooms. Whatever we pick I think it's gonna have to look like
wood.

If you want it to look like wood, you should use actual wood.
Then put down about 9 coats of poly, and add mats of various
materials in high-traffic areas.

"Harry Muscle" wrote in
oups.com:

I'm looking for opinions on what kind of floor to install in our new
place. We have a dog and a fish tank, so I'm looking for options that
would stand up to dog claws, possible dog mistakes, and minor
(sometimes major) spilling of water from the fish tank.

What size of dog do you have, and how often do you walk it/have it groomed.

If it is a heavy(ish) dog (lab-sized or bigger by my guess) that is
consistently allowed to have longish nails, you will want to worry more
about the finish you put on the flooring. You will want a lot of coats of
something pretty resistant.

If you have a light dog or you ahve a dog whose claws are always cut/worn
down to not touch the flooring, you don't need to worry as much about
scratches.

We (my wife and I) have a miniature schnauzer/shih-tzu blend that is about
12 lbs. We have wood floors throughout the house, and after almost two
years ahve seen very little effect on the wood floor. The people before us
(1 year) had an Olde English Sheepdog, and therewere no scratches from him
either.

--
Marcel and Moogli
http://mudbunny.blogspot.com/

Harry Muscle wrote:
I'm looking for opinions on what kind of floor to install in our new
place. We have a dog and a fish tank, so I'm looking for options that
would stand up to dog claws, possible dog mistakes, and minor
(sometimes major) spilling of water from the fish tank.

We've had real hardwood before (finished onsite), but the dog scratched
it up real good with his nails. We've had laminate before also,
however, any water left standing for any significant amount of time
caused the seams to swell. Now I know in a perfect world I shouldn't
have to worry about standing water, however, I don't wanna have to deal
with replacing parts of the floor in case one of these days there is a
puddle of water that sits there for a day or two.

I'm currently looking at vinyl plank flooring. It's like vinyl tiles,
however, it's made to look like wood. One company that makes it is
www.karndean.com . Anyone have any experience with this kind of
flooring? I'm guessing it totally water proof, how about scratches
though?

Any other suggestions I should look at?

Thanks,
Harry

I cant believe no one has said vinyl or linoleum sheet goods. Minimal
seams, easy to clean and stand up well to all sorts of abuse.
Softer than tile, no grout joints (which are harder to clean). And not
too expensive.

wrote:
Toni wrote:
"Rich Greenberg" wrote in message
...
I have a friend with _several_ Dobermans who used to have a fully
carpeted house and did a lot of searching before deciding to go with
full ceramic tile.

It has turned out to be an excellent choice, as the very occasional
messes that they make are _easy_ to clean up.

There is a downside here if any of your dogs are aged or infirm (or are
likely to become such). One of my dogs has degenerative disk disease
and sometimes can't keep his footing well on the tile.


I have a fully ceramic tiled house and many aquariums.
It is imperative that you keep the floor free of water, drool, slobber, and
anything else even halfway liquid, or you will fall flat on your ass- hard.
And going barefoot in any of the above listed situation will guarantee you a
serious fall.

And yes, the old dogs object strenuously and you end up filling the house
with room sized rugs, which isn't half bad. I always considered them semi
disposable.

If I had it to do over again I would get the roughest slate I could find.


--
Toni
http://www.cearbhaill.com/rules.htm

I'm located in Ontario, Canada, which means it's cold for a good part
of the year, so tile in the whole house wouldn't be a good thing ...
plus I don't think my wife would like the look of a tiled living room
and bedrooms. Whatever we pick I think it's gonna have to look like
wood.

Thanks,
Harry

P.S. Anyone ever heard of waterproof laminate? Seems to exist in the
UK, but can't find anything in Canada.

I've heard this argument before about tile not being good in the winter
but I don't buy it.

My logic tells me that the tile would be the same temp. as what you've
set your thermostat to, just like the rest of the house.

Lewis.

******

wrote in message
I've heard this argument before about tile not being good in the winter
but I don't buy it.

My logic tells me that the tile would be the same temp. as what you've
set your thermostat to, just like the rest of the house.

Logic and perception collide.

You are correct, they will be the same temperature. The problem is that you
body is about 97 degrees and the floor is much less. Put your foot on
carpet and you feel no temperature change. Put your foot on tile and if
feels cold. Why?

On the carpet your foot is supported be a series of fiber and lots of air
spaces between them. Your senses do not notice the temperature difference as
there is little heat transfer. Put your foot on that smooth tile and you
have a lot more surface contact with the skin. Since heat always transfer
to the colder spots, the greater contact and material that acts like a
heatsink, makes your body feel cold.

Rich Greenberg wrote:

There is a downside here if any of your dogs are aged or infirm (or are
likely to become such). One of my dogs has degenerative disk disease
and sometimes can't keep his footing well on the tile.

"Slick" tile comprises only a small fraction of the ceramic and
porcelain tiles now available. We found a huge selection of
tiles that have textures rough enough to overcome this problem,
even when wet.

That said, footing-wise for dogs and humans, carpeting is the
best choice. But it's not water-friendly.

Maybe a combo of tile and area rugs?

FurPaw

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 07:42:41 -0600, FurPaw
wrote:

That said, footing-wise for dogs and humans, carpeting is the
best choice. But it's not water-friendly.

As someone who has wiped out on carpet, I can testify that it can be
surprisingly slick and dangerous. I cannot think of one positive thing
to say about carpet.

Maybe a combo of tile and area rugs?

My all-time favorite flooring is wood, with area rugs for the dogs (or,
as I used to refer to them: wrestlemania mats).

--
Shelly
http://www.cat-sidh.net (the Mother Ship)
http://esther.cat-sidh.net (Letters to Esther)

Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
-- Claude Monet

On 29 Aug 2006 10:31:52 -0700, "Harry Muscle"
wrote:

We've had real hardwood before (finished onsite), but the dog scratched
it up real good with his nails.

I think wood is about the best flooring surface for both humans and
dogs. I have not found it to be particularly scratch-prone. What
scratches *do* happen can be easily buffed out with a little
stain-varnish combo.

As for the dog's nails, if they are clicking on the floor, they are too
long and ought to be trimmed. Keeping the dog's nails short will go a
long way toward keeping your floor scratch-free.

--
Shelly
http://www.cat-sidh.net (the Mother Ship)
http://esther.cat-sidh.net (Letters to Esther)

I would prefer not to.
-- Bartleby the Scrivener

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 10:21:14 -0400, "Suja" wrote:


"Shelly" wrote in message:

I think wood is about the best flooring surface for both humans and
dogs. I have not found it to be particularly scratch-prone.

Every home I've visited that had a combination of large dogs and wood floor,
I've found to be scratched up. A friend of mine hasn't had a dog in years,
but the gouges left by her Lab is still there on the floor.

Well, there *is* a certain amount of upkeep with wood floors, if you
want them to look nice.

So, when are you taking delivery of Pan? I've tried all sorts of things,
including daily Dremeling, but that's one dog whose quick just refuses to
shrink back. I've finally resigned myself to living with it instead of
driving myself crazy over it.

That may well be what's going on with the OP's dog, but my experience
has been that people just don't trim their dogs' nails frequently
enough. It mostly seems to be a matter of ignorance and not of the dog
having Bizarro Miracle Gro Nails[tm].

One of these days, I'll take pictures of her
nails; they're mostly white and you can see the quick really well - promise
they'll make you want to cry.

Do they bother her? Harriet had a couple of problem nails that bothered
her. On one of her vet visits, I had them trimmed while she was under.
From then on, I've shaved micro bits off with a trimmer, then used a
rough emery board to finish them off.

--
Shelly
http://www.cat-sidh.net (the Mother Ship)
http://esther.cat-sidh.net (Letters to Esther)

My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the
letters get in the wrong places.
-- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

"Shelly" wrote in message:

I think wood is about the best flooring surface for both humans and
dogs. I have not found it to be particularly scratch-prone.

Every home I've visited that had a combination of large dogs and wood floor,
I've found to be scratched up. A friend of mine hasn't had a dog in years,
but the gouges left by her Lab is still there on the floor.

As for the dog's nails, if they are clicking on the floor, they are too
long and ought to be trimmed.

So, when are you taking delivery of Pan? I've tried all sorts of things,
including daily Dremeling, but that's one dog whose quick just refuses to
shrink back. I've finally resigned myself to living with it instead of
driving myself crazy over it. One of these days, I'll take pictures of her
nails; they're mostly white and you can see the quick really well - promise
they'll make you want to cry.

Suja