Colours and types are personal preference I think (personally I like walnut parquet). And solid wood rather than laminate. I was the same re: big spend on floors but it is definitely worth it. It was something I was glad I did and did well. Worth the money. :)

We moved a couple of years ago and our new house was similar to yours - tile and carpet. I especially disliked how the chopped up flooring made my rather large house feel like a bunch of small rooms. Friends/family tried to talk me out of doing solid oak floors throughout, but I pushed forward and LOVE how they turned out. I say go for it... you won't regret it!

If you have the money then update all of the floors to match the existing wood. As you’ve already assessed, installing and staining hardwoods is a very messy and smelly job. While $11,000 - $12,000 is a lot of money to spend on the heels of closing on a new home, considered the added value. Hardwood floors have a huge return on investment.

Having done this both ways, I can tell you that having the floors installed and finished before you move in even one piece of furniture or a box will save you time, hard work, and money. I like Houzz for many types of help, but this topic is one for the professionals, in my opinion. I highly recommend that you visit a good showroom and talk to an experienced installer. (Check Angie’s List or get referrals from friends and neighbors. Also check the BBB.) For my current home, I visited a beautiful showroom floor that included many woods and stains; their floor as well as their samples reflected the quality of their products and workmanship. [I did this after first visiting Lumber Liquidators, and the difference was HUGE.] The owner of this family business came to my home to give me estimates and he made recommendations that I’d been told were not possible. He recommended refinishing the existing wood floor to match the new floors, even though that meant less money for his company. And he gave me a rule of thumb for choosing the color of the finish based on existing wood in home (5-6 shades lighter or darker) then sent over their decorator with samples to finalize my selection. We all have different preferences for quality and finished look…you won’t regret doing research in your local area. The experts of a reputable company can take your budget and your durability needs into consideration and help you decide if eventual resale is a factor. I am so pleased that I found the company I did, and I hope you will be, too.

I'd rip out the dining room hardwood and replace all except keep the tile in the kitchen and replace it later after you get over the sticker shock of the hardwood. A wider plank in a medium stain would look fantastic.

Don't mind the carpets, nice and soft underfoot. Don't like the contrast between dining wood floor and kitchen tiles. I would leave carpet and change the kitchen dining room to all one material. Styles, colours and fashions change so quickly I would go for good quality laminate. Some are so good its hard to tell that they are not real wood.

Go with number 1 it`s really what you want to do. It will look wonderful especially the kitchen...so sterile looking with all those white tiles. Hardwood never goes out of style. Pick your favourite stain, it all looks good.

If it was my house and I had the money I would do option 1 since I like the uniformity and no transition pieces.

Do hardwood all over. Just do it. You will not regret it. I installed satin, prefinished, Brazillian Cherry myself in living/dining/kitchen/bath and will do it in every house I live. Brazilian Cherry is a very hard/durable wood and looks GORGEOUS! I didn't even want to bring in the furniture!

If you have any DIY skills at all, you can do the installation yourself and save $$$. Just make sure your joints are tight. It was my first DIY project and honestly one of the simplest. I mean it's a bit demanding physically, but nothing technical. Just do some research online. The place I bought my wood had a class and rented tools if needed.

I'm looking at moving for work and when I go house hunting, I don't even consider the condition of the carpet/flooring because I know I will tear it out for my hardwood. DO IT!

I would go for your option 1. The dining room hardwood looks cheap and will not match up well with the new floor. Tile looks dated in a big space and carpet gets dirty quickly, especially with children. The hardwood will be a great investment. You can get furniture piece by piece over time but it will be the wood floors that will add value to your home. I love the mocha you are considering!

do it yourself. laying hardwood floors is relatively easy. buy good pre-finished stuff that you love, do some research and rent a floor nailer. we've done it several times through the years. that way, you can afford a better floor because you'll save all the labor costs!

I would never go with tile over wood! Wood is warm when it is cool outside and much more comfortable to stand on for long periods of time. We pulled up our carpet in our master bedroom and put in prefinished satin wood floor and love it. it does butt up to our hardwood that we have in the hall but we ran in a different direction and looks fine. In the den we pulled up the carpet and stained the concrete, i like that too but it is colder in the winter.

tracywalk: if you had 4 dogs, you would gain a greater appreciation for tile over hardwood!!

yes we have had and still do have dogs and the only thing that has made any dings in the floor is when she drops her antler that she chews on. We do not have any scratch marks from claws or furniture. We did lay the prefinished floor our self and it is really not that hard at all. We did a glue down since we are on a slab in TX. just be sure that you get all the glue cleaned up right away though.

you are unbelievably lucky! our hardwoods looked like a roadmap.

Not sure what that means?

Filled with scratches, I suspect. ;-)
We have two energetic aussies and no problems with the look of our hardwood floors, but as ours are 90 years old, they already have a bit of a patina beneath the satin finish.

yes, feeny, you got it. oak floors are harder than the maple that we used, but they aren't nearly as attractive. my opinion, of course. be sure to check the hardness of the wood species you decide to use.

I have friends who put in engineered "hardwood" floors and the dogs have destroyed them. The friends have said when they replace the floors, they'll go with solid wood. Not sure if that will be better, but pets/children are certainly a factor to keep in mind when choosing your floors.

I live in the Midwest where it snows half the year. I have to take extra precautions to keep melted snow from damaging my wood in the entries to my home. I also clean the kitchen floor on my hands and knees because it cannot be mopped like tile or vinyl. Wood floors certainly take different care than other floor products. But, I love them anyway!

Maple is harder than oak. If dog scratches from large "active" dogs are of concern I would steer away from Walnut since it is a bit softer and has a delicate grain vs the coarser grain of oak and hickory. Hickory is hard and looks nice in a medium to dark color, the grain pattern is a bit busy but it is all a matter of taste and not so apparent in a darker color. (Jensen: Bona Kemi has a wonderful wood floor cleaning kit so you don't have to be on your hands and knees, sold at Home Depot most hardware stores).

uh, no. not unless you know of some super hard species that i have never heard of!

We have a dog with our hickory hardwood floors and don't have any problems. Guess it depends on the dog as well as the floor. Our neighbors want to re-do their floor because they had a 'softer wood' which their dogs tore up.

I am sorry you seen frustrated with your flooring. You are right and it is a good point, wood flooring is not for every household. Before putting them in you certainly have to take into consideration where you live (snow, water and dirt that is dragged in as somebody else mentioned), family members (such as your dogs) and general traffic throughout the house. Stone and tile are good options and there is always Pergo for a scratch free floor that looks like wood.

Dark wood floors throughout. It will look lovely and I love your inspiration pics. I'm just about to put in a new white kitchen with walnut floors and very excited to lose my 20 year old vinyl!!

I have the engineered wood floors and the dogs do not bother it at all.
I would stay away from the Pergo though unless you do not care if they look like a picture of wood on your floors.

$11,000. For how many sq ft? It doesn't seem that high. Wood is expensive. But adds value. Nothing can hurt it except water, be careful with cleaning floors. Very dark floors show dut and re hard to maintain. Prego, it's a brand, has come a long ways in pass 5-10 years, it's a lot cheaper, and not to be over looked. I agree you need a few bids. Do it before you move in. It's a mess after.

Wow, love the discussion going on in here :) I decided to go with tearing out everything, laying down 3.25 inch boards and doing site finished stain. So now I am going back and forth with the 1st bidder, and will then do some comparison bids.

Total sq footage is 1100. Here is the breakdown of the bid I got - with which the updates I made will likely be between 12-13K. Does anything jump out as just waaaaaay too much??

Remove tile @ 3.00 sq ft = $1230
Remove carpet @ .35 sq ft = $161
Install new shoe molding @ 1.75 sq ft = $612.50
Install/Nail down boards @ 2.75 sq ft = $2860
Sand and finish floors with 3 coats poly @ 4.00 sq ft = $4160
Materials @ 3.73 sq ft (price for the 2.25 boards, I expect it to go up some for 3.25 boards) = $3879.20

There you have it!

It is not cheep to do this. Like I had said before we did the engineered ourself and it was a glue down. My friends just put down real wood hand scraped and it was about $15 a square foot. I does look great though.

Have you thought of porcelain wood tile? It looks just like hardwood, more durable, and cheaper. You can get a wide plank look in any finish color you want without the worry of refinishing or upkeep.

We are buying a new construction home and are debating hard between wood with a matte oil finish or wood look tile throughout the entire 1st floor: kitchen, dining and living room. LOVE the wood but we have a newborn, 2 year old, 3 year old and yellow lab and EVERYONE is saying no to wood - do the tile. Supposedly it's come a long way.... Thoughts?

We have a 3 year old, new baby on the way and dog and our wood is holding up so far (of course more time will tell ....) We are careful about keeping a towel by the door for wet shoe prints that somehow the shoes weren't take off on the rug. And we are careful about teaching our child (ren) to be careful with water etc. Spills do happen. So long as you clean them up right away it's no problem - and so much nicer than spills on carpet !!! Not sure about tile though as I haven't lived with it myself. The wood feels nice underfoot and looks nice. I suppose it's the same with anything - you get what you pay for - in general. I personally would LOVE to have marble floors but they aren't in the budget !!!

Tile makers are getting a lot better at recreating hardwood on tile. Now you don't have to worry about putting two of the same patterns together. We make our hardwood tile with 40-60 different vein cut designs and others are following suit.

option 2. Lay new hardwood floor everywhere else then refinish the dinning room floor then stain them to match the rest of the room.

Great choice going with option 1. It will be gorgeous! please post pics when done. This is a project I need to do also, just don't have the funds right now. I just moved into a new old house 3 monts ago and wish I would of just done it then! I should of rolled it in the mortgage somehow. Not really sure you can do that here in Canada. Oh well it will be fun saving up ;)

We just re-modeled our kitchen, added oak hard wood floors in there, and re-sanded and stained 4 other rooms and our stairs to match. We decided on PROVINCIAL stain, by Minwax. It's a beautiful medium brown color that lets you see the grain of the oak. Then 3 coats of satin poly. We love it.

It is difficult to say too much about the price quoted as I don't know where you are located. Those figures are higher than the going rate in my area. Around here, installation is about $2 - $2.50 sq foot and similar amount for sand and basic finish; darker stains and higher quality finishes add on to that cost. Installation costs depend on your house's construction, condition and layout.

I would suggest looking into the two part waterborne floor coatings like Traffic or Streetshoe. They are more expensive than the oil base coatings, but worth the extra money in my book. Plus, they don't take as long to dry so they can get two or sometimes three coats put on in one day. Don't go for the single part water base poly products, those aren't as durable. If you do go for an oil base poly, have the installer apply gloss for the first two coats, then satin or semi-gloss for the final coat only.

Hate laminate flooring - wood look or otherwise. Put it in my kitchen (I don't have open plan) and replaced it 2 years later. It always looked fake to me. Expensive mistake. Not a big fan of parquet either. There's nothing like beautiful wood floors. I'd go medium because it shows dust less.

I have wood in my sunroom and lr/dr with a carefully coordinating tile between in my kitchen, vestibule, bathroom and laundry rm. don't have open concept, but you can see all from front and back doors and they look beautiful. I prefer narrower planks for my 100 year old house, but that is what I had in the front rooms already. Didn't want to change such a large area. I have found that properly finished wood is very forgiving (ours was covered for 20 yrs with carpet and had only a bit of glue damage when we went back to the wood.

1. Get a minimum of 3 quotes, and Lumber Liquidators should be reasonably priced. Sometimes you can get free installation with a purchase. READ reviews before picking an installer!

2. If you are handy you can install the floors yourself, especially if you get the click-in type and have some helpers. If I can do it, you can do it, but obviously you have to know your limitations.

3. Go with one pattern throughout and go with wood-beautiful examples above. Just remember, dark floor, light paint.

4. Hand scraped is less expensive.

Site finished is preferred in my opinion. The pricing you received isn't bad. They aren't making any money on the wood so they get to pay your taxes on it as well. Check with the NWFA to see if they are a Certified Professional. If you are spending thousands of dollars you want to make sure they are doing it right.
Do not attempt a project like this yourselves people. I've seen too many homeowner specials that just ruin a good floor. Hardwood floors is all I do since 1999 and I still have problems sometimes. There is a lot of variables that need to be taken into account. You won't remember saving a couple of bucks down the road when things go wrong.
I hate seeing all the ill informed advice given on here. Laminate is a completely different Floorcovering product as is Tile. They all have a place but each requires a professional to ascertain the best option and method of installation.
If anyone thinks hardwood flooring is easy I'm currently hiring and would love to put you to the test.

They are done!! Couldn't be happier with my decision :)

Hard to capture with my iPhone. Can't wait to get rid of the red paint and backsplash.

Absolutely beautiful - such an enormous change to the whole house!!!!

woah, nice! what type of wood are you using?

We went with 3 1/4 white oak common grade for some character. Custom stain using Nanoshield brand and a satin finish.

Wow! Absolutely gorgeous...

Wow! Beautiful!!!

Thanks for coming back and showing us the finished product. You'll never regret this investment. The floors are stunning!

I agree with every other comment so far - LOVE it !!! You made the right choice !!!

lovely, just lovely!

perfect....keep going...your decisions are bang on