Your Wife Would Love Engineered Hardwood Flooring

It was a bright Sunday morning, when I happened to be discussing the pros and cons of going in for engineered hardwood flooring with my wife. She was against it. So she prevailed upon me to offer a convincing reply to each of her pointed questions, based upon which the final decision, whether to go or not to go for engineered hardwood flooring was to be taken. Being an engineer myself, I decided to adopt the interactive and educative way to convince her.

The session went thus: She began with the core question: Why engineered hardwood flooring? I said: Because it is the newest and hottest trend to hit the residential flooring industry

What is so special about it? I replied: Looking like real wood and costing about one-third less than the cost of real wood, it is easy to install and lasts longer.

She insisted that I should highlight the outstanding benefits; I replied in the affirmative and started listing them: Engineered hardwood flooring has the biggest advantage of ease of cleaning since it does not trap dirt. Most spills can be mopped up with a linen cloth or a sponge; it is easy to repair since damaged planks can be replaced without disturbing the harmony of the adjoining boards. More importantly, it has high ultra violet resistance which aids in blocking the sun's harmful rays and preventing the floor pattern from getting faded.

It requires far less sub floor preparation than natural wood, ceramic or vinyl materials and helps reduce installation time, labor and cost.

It is wear-free, fade-free and stain-free; virtually maintenance free.

She trapped me with her googly by asking whether it offers sufficient leeway in experimenting with creative flooring possibilities.

I bounced back with vigor for she had hit the bull's eye with the most pertinent question.

Engineered hardwood flooring offers a tremendous flexibility in the choice of lightly colored stone patterns, wood grains and the liberty to change some of their accents. A variety of looks can be achieved by simply altering the manner in which the laminates are laid, like straight, diagonal, staggered or corner-to-corner. It can be re-laid with minimum wastage.

Having heard so many positive attributes about engineered hardwood flooring, it was natural to expect another bouncer from her.

She retorted: why do you not mention some facts about its weaknesses?

As long as one has taken adequate precautions while laying the sub-floor to avoid trapped water or prevent abuse and misuse, it will last for a lifetime, I valiantly announced, complimenting her for posing the most natural question.

No marks for guessing what happened next. Engineered hardwood flooring had gained entry into our house!