Let's talk hardwood flooring. Who's got them or has had them? Pros? Cons?

[William]

Let me ask you this then, if you were going to rip out carpet/pad in the house you live in and do something other than carpet/pad.... what would you go with & why?

I did just rip out around 800 square feet of beer stained (not sure how that happened) and pet vomit stained carpet. Going to preface it with I don't have kids or large energetic dogs in the house. If I didnt have a business selling hardwood floors the other product I would look at besides hardwood is bamboo (with formaldehyde free glue). Personally I would keep/add tile in kitchens or bathrooms. Both hardwoods and bamboo are easy to keep clean and spilled beers and pet vomit will come up quickly even if you find it a couple days later. Both are natural products, are long lasting, and have a natural beauty where every board is unique. Personally I am not a big fan of laminate because of the limited number of patterns used to create it and the fact that the top layer is essentially plastic although it works great in some situations. At one point I would have considered cork until I was on a job site with new cork and the initial VOC emissions were nauseating. This may not be the case with all cork floors but it turned me off.

Two more pics of hardwood floors I was involved with. The first is an engineered American Walnut here in the Springs (very soft, so a no shoes kind of floor). The second is a solid floor in a model home in Minnesota.