My wife wants either a hardwood floor or laminate floor in our small condominium dining room. We will place the floor over slab. She loves the hand scraped look. We want something that will look good and be durable with our 2 young boys.

Does anyone have some good experiences with laminate or engineered floors? We want to install the floor together. I am decent at DIY as I just installed granite counter tops, new cabinets, sink, etc in my kitchen. I knew nothing. I looked at YouTube videos for advice.

Thanks!

Alot of the Engineered Handscraped Hardwoods will hold up pretty descent with 2 young boys , depending on the type of distressing. Being that the floor is already distressed, there's easier ways to hide "kid distressing". I'm partial to Hardwood, but a 12mm Laminate is going to withstand more torture. There are some pretty impressive looking Laminates out there these days. Either way, IMO a floating installation will be more user friendly when it comes to a DIY project.

Actually I just noticed your talking about a Dining Room. How much abuse can go on in that type of area? Use chair protectors, and no roller blading around the table

Not a fan of the 12mm laminate unless you have some high stone or tile to meet up with. I think it's all a gimmick about the sound supression. And I hate LL laminate....it only has about four pictures that are flip flopped so you see a pattern of grain across the room. UCK!