Do you like hardwood floors in the kitchen?

[mamapjama]

I really would rather hardwood for the look and I guess the feel of it, but I worry about water drips from the sink and dishwasher.

 

Do you have it? Do you love it or dislike it in the kitchen?

 

The other choice is tile but I find it hard to make the room flow with the other areas.

[Ellie]

I have hardwood in my kitchen. Love it.

 

As long as there are plenty of coats of polyurethane, your floors will handle dishwasher drips and other wet mishaps just fine.

[swainsonshawk]

Most of my downstairs is hardwood. It is a lot to keep up on (I would prefer carpet in my living room), but I love it in the kitchen. I have 3 coats of polyurethane and I have had no problems with water stains and such. That's with six kids and water spills left overnight and everything. We will need to have the floor refinished in a couple of years, but we put down a raw wood floor instead of prefinished because I knew we would have to refinish it. We are getting scratches from chairs and benches and daily life (roller blades!).

[Tess in the Burbs]

I don't like it.

 

We are renting now and it's a nice floor but I have a rug down under the sink/dishwasher area. I am constantly wiping up drips b/c I don't want them sitting on the wood.

 

When I had tile I wasn't as picky and would just mop weekly.

 

I can see it on the wood and I worry about it ruining the wood.

 

I wouldn't put wood in my kitchen when we own again

[MIch elle]

Love it and I don't worry about water - had it 7 yrs in the kitchen, dining and living & hall areas (all connected).

[justasque]

I have fake wood laminate, from Ikea; been there for 12 years and still looking good. I have hardwood in the rest of the house; I think the fake in the kitchen is nice because it's easy to clean, and I don't have to worry about scratches from chairs.

[lea1]

I love hard woods in the kitchen. I've never had a problem with water or anything. Most people clean up spills when they happen anyway. We are getting ready to build a new house and will definitely have hard woods in the kitchen again.

[wapiti]

12 years of hardwood in the kitchen here (five in 120 yr old house, 2 in 90 yr old house, 5 in current new-construction house).

 

It's warmer and softer than tile. I like tile too, but only with radiant-floor heating.

 

When our house was being built, I requested a special finish called Traffic. Normally it's for commercial establishments like restaurants. It's matte, unlike normal hardwood floor finish which is shiny, but it stands up to six kids pretty well. The floor people recommend adding a coat of finish every few years in between refinishing. After five years with Traffic, at this point I see NO need to either add a coat or refinish. It's hard to even imagine what my kids have done to this floor and it looks as good as ever.

 

ETA: when considering a stain color for a hardwood floor, consider how the dirt/crumbs/lint will show on various light and dark shades. We have a medium oak color, and it does not show scratches or dirt (not bad for the Land of Crumbs)

Edited September 16, 2010 by wapiti

[AFwife Claire]

I love mine! I don't really worry about water. Believe me, we've had plenty of spills, ice cubes that haven't made it into cups and have melted, etc., and the floor has been just fine. It looks so warm and beautiful!

 

We had tile in another house, and THAT was something I hated. Blech--never again. So cold, so hard, and everything that touched it broke. And the grout always looked yucky. I would definitely put hardwood in again, though. I love it!

[simka2]

I like it, but it needs a lot of finish!!! We have a fridge with a water dispenser/ice maker and little kids...this equals slight warping in that area :glare:

[Kim in Appalachia]

Our home had hardwood in the kitchen when we moved in. We still have it. It has held up nicely, but I'm not bothered by scratches. I would never put hardwood in. It scratches, even with the best finish. With 7 people in the house and all of us constantly in the kitchen, there are a lot of scratches. There is a lot of moisture in a kitchen, which is not good for wood. When you drop something heavy it gets a dent.

 

I would choose a nice vinyl or tile. You can get a nice, dark tile that goes well with hardwood.

 

I also have hardwood in my dining room. I do like it in there. But I'm not cooking or washing dishes in the dining room. There is no fridge that might (does) leak, no can goods that accidentally fall on the floor, no water that gets splashed from the sink.

 

In general, I love hardwood, and I would love to be able to put it throughout my house, just not in the kitchen or bathrooms.

[nono]

We did this in our kitchen...

 

LOVE it! When we built our home, the flooring guy was reluctant to put wood in the kitchen, but consented when we picked out this engineered wood. It fits our casual, beach lifestyle.

 

Here's where they explain their engineering processes.

Edited September 15, 2010 by nono

[kalanamak]

Yes, just seal it well. Much nicer than tile.

[Belacqua]

Does anybody have either cork or bamboo floors in her kitchen? I'm looking to replace my unspeakably ugly floor, and those are my two frontrunners.

[Photo Ninja]

We have cherry floors, installed unfinished and finished in place.

 

I love the look, but would prefer tile in my kitchen. We didn't have much of a choice because the kitchen-family room is one large room, and there is not a natural dividing space to add tile without it looking odd, and I wanted a wood floor in the family room.

 

I have throw rugs in front of the sink and dishwasher, and that helps catch drips. I have to be diligent about wiping up spills, and I would be less concerned about it with tile.

 

So I wouldn't install hardwood in my kitchen in the future, but it does look nice.

[rwjx2khsmj]

I've had tile, laminate and hard wood in various kitchens. I greatly prefer the hard wood.

[Momofeat]

We have hardwood. I love the looks of it, but it is going to need to be refinished before the rest of our hardwood.

[bookfiend]

I really would rather hardwood for the look and I guess the feel of it, but I worry about water drips from the sink and dishwasher.

 

Do you have it? Do you love it or dislike it in the kitchen?

 

The other choice is tile but I find it hard to make the room flow with the other areas.

 

Love, love, love my kitchen hardwoods. They have held beautifully for 13 years. I formerly had a tile kitchen - never again. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and my legs would just ache at the end of the day from the hard, hard tile (with concrete underlayment). Wood is just so much softer with plywood underlayment. Also, tile is 3x more difficult to clean.

[Margo out of lurking]

Another vote for Love. They look terrific, we use some sort of damp mop/cleaner every month or so. They're super easy to keep clean, vacuuming with the rest of the house. We've had hw in two kitchens, and we've never had a problem with scratching. Our kitchen table/chairs sit directly on the wood floor; in our last house, we had barstools that were on the wood. We pick up ice cubes that fall, but I don't wipe up every drop of water that hits the floor (thinking of when I load the dishwasher).

 

I wouldn't have any reason to consider anything else.

[My3Boys]

We had hardwood in the kitchen of the house we were in for 16 years and absolutely loved it! As long as it is sealed it will do fine with spills. People usually clean up big spills right away anyway and with the polyurethane drops just bead up.

 

Hardwood also doesn't show dirt like linoleum or tile, probably because of the wood grain. I also found it much easier to clean. I like the wood cleaner from Don Aslett's Cleaning Center. It comes concentrated and you mix it with water in a spray bottle. You can use it on anything wood. It did a great job on my cabinets as well as my floor.

 

I have never had laminate wood, but I had friends who did and hated it. They had problems with it peeling, especially after a few years of use. I don't know about engineered wood, but I personally don't like the way it looks compared to solid wood flooring.

[Miss Marple]

Yes! If the sink area is very messy (ie, kids doing the dishes), then add a cute throw rug. I have a couple that I rotated (summer, fall, winter themes) when the boys were younger. Now we don't use anything.

[mamapjama]

Oh boy! I have swung back and forth on this issue so many times in the past couple of days I don't know where I am! I read all of your comments to dh yesterday and I scoured kitchen gallerys etc. online and so many of them are hardwood. Consumer's Report Aug. just did a kitchen issue and they listed some recommended wood. I called one of the flooring companies this morning to see if they had the particular recommended product and he was good, not trying to steer me away from hardwood but he raised some good points. He said that wood shrinks and expands in various temperatures. In the winter it will shrink and the spacing between boards will be a bit wider. If one of the kids were to spill milk on the floor it would go into the grooves and you can't get it out. It could get smelly, mildewy etc. He said refinishing doesn't get into those grooves.

 

This made sense and had me leaning back toward the tile again. I really don't want it. UGH!

[Miss Marple]

Well, I've raised 4 boys on our hardwood kitchen floors. They are all now teenagers and the kitchen is their favorite room in the house. We haven't had any trouble with spilled milk getting smelly in cracks :D. We have the traditional hardwood (approx. 2" wide) red oak. Yes, there is some shrinkage and contraction, but not enough to bother anything, IMO. Also, talk to your installer about the best time of year to put it in. We had our hardwood delivered and stacked inside the house for a couple of weeks so that it "acclimated" to the house temperature and humidity. We have lived here for 15 years and have had the floors refinished once. With the amount of traffic we have (lots of teenagers, indoor pets, we host a lot of church gatherings, etc.) I think it has held up wonderfully! It's so much easier on the legs/feet and dishes than tile (and any little heads that may go bump!).

[AFwife Claire]

Yes, we have 7 kids, the first 4 being boys, and while we've had plenty of spilled milk, I can say it has never caused any sort of problem! We also bought our wood and had it stacked in our dining room for awhile before installing it, so maybe that helped. We also have the standard 2" hardwood--some kind of oak. We live in Northern VA, and it's pretty common to have hardwood in kitchens here. Maybe if I didn't know anyone who had it, I would have been more hesitant to install ours. But we could see many, many hardwood kitchen floors that have held up wonderfully over the years, with big families like ours, so I stopped being concerned. And we haven't had any problems!

[FeFe]

Had them...loved them....miss them!

 

When we are able to redo the floors in our new house, we will definitely put hardwoods in the kitchen.