Highly recommend my contractor

You lost me at "had my old parquet floors ripped out."

Seriously, I'm glad it worked out well for you. Always nice to hear a reno story with a happy ending.

Can I ask why the concrete subfloor was prepped if you were doing a floating floor? Why floating floors? why not glue down? Just curious

West81st, fear not: concrete subfloors and walls indicate "parquet", not parquet. No loss.

Yes, I should have been clear about that. There's "parauet" and then there's PARQUET. Mine was the former - a veneer parquet shall we say. It was glued down about 30 years and and boy did they glue it! Didn't go nail down simply because me & the contractor saw a high likelihood of having a great flat surface. The prep consisted of removing the old glue, etc. Turned out as hoped. Don't mind about not having solid wood floors as I don't plan on selling and we'll probably keep the apt in the family. However, the flooring itselF is a great engineered, so success overall.

West--I hear what you're saying, but sometimes it just cannot be helped.

We're having the same dilemma--the gorgeous parquet/Greek key border floors in our prewar c. 1910 apartment are so badly shot that we may be forced to replace them, sadly.

Nail heads sticking up all over the place, pieces of wafer-thin marquetry falling out, tongue-and-groove joints collapsing and leaving holes hither and yon. It is a true shame, really--years of sanding and abuse have just ruined the thing. We'd hoped they could be restored but every floor guy who's come in the look has said no way.

It's a tough decision because we'd vastly prefer to keep the original floor.

^^^ to look, not the look^^

As long as it's not butter and not parquet.

What would be wrong with replacing parquet with straight boards?

What on earth did I write??

Meant to say, it's not butter if it's not parquet.

Lets face facts, things do not last forever. It would be great if my computer lasted more then 3 years, tv for 10 years, wood floors 30years. Nothing last forever and then we need to replace them.

>Don't mind about not having solid wood floors as I don't plan on selling and we'll probably keep the apt in the family. However, the flooring itselF is a great engineered, so success overall.

Ultimately that's all that matters. Do keep in mind all that ridiculous amount of glue helped keep the floors going 30 years. Everything's a trade off one way or another.

Engineered floors offer a great variety and versitality of shapes, sizes, and colors. But I hate them, they look so fake to me personally.
I also prefer Utz to Pringles, maybe a pattern there.

gator--we're actually considering planks. When done nicely, planks can look great, albeit not necessarily era-correct. In our case, the original floors in the bedroom wing are in good shape and won't need replacement. Those have planks, as was traditional in bedrooms and secondary rooms. So even if we do planks in the living space, I think they'll 'blend' properly. We're also considering herringbone, which, along with parquet, would have been more typical but it's much pricier.

The IRS says new floors last for 27.5 years; computers for 3.