We are about to finish the floors in our basement and the guy at home depot suggested engineered wood floors instead of pergo type floors. They r real wood, do you know if this is a good product, and any negative things about it. Also the guy said it could be refinished, but it looked too thin for that to me.
Engineered woods are perfect for basement areas, as the other poster explained....the layers of the wood help the moisture to get out of the wood, making it a more dimentionally stable product. As far as refinishing an engineered wood - there are certain products that can be refinished 3 times, but you aren't going to find those at Home Depot. HOWEVER - when you start to see surface scratches and traffic patterns, a sand and finisher can come in and buff and coat the floor. This is where the top layer of urethane is removed and another coat applied. You can do this every year if you like, because you aren't sanding into the wood layer. The only time you need to sand a floor back to bare wood(like in refinishing) is if you want to change the color, or have some serious damage.....if you have that much damage with an engineered floor, you can always replace the damaged boards. If you go with a laminate floor(Pergo), when you start to see surface scratches, and traffic patterns - which will occur....there is nothing that you can do to refresh the floors and get the scratches out because they're basically plastic.
It's a good idea. Engineered wood is 3-7 layers of thin wood with the top layer being the exotic real wood. Each layer is stacked in opposite directions. The cross -ply construction prevents the wood planks from reacting negativlely to any humidity, which can cause expansion / contraction. It's ideal for basements and can be installed directly on top of cement.
To add to what the others have already explained, yes, engineered floors are ideal to put in basements. The layers that comprise it's core doesn't actually help to expel the floor's moisture content BUT it does help the floor to adjust to changing climates and varying levels of humidity. The engineered construction fights against the adverse reaction of contraction and expansion and lessens the chances of warping, buckling, cupping, etc. With regards to your concern that it may be too thin to be refinished, you probably want to clarify with the Home Depot guy if it's re-sandable AND refinishable or just the latter. Find out what the actual wear layer of the floor is. If it is less than 2mm, chances are you can only refinish it. 2mm and thicker is still re-sandable at least once, and sand lightly only. You can refinish without sanding the finish off by using the appropriate chemical/solvent. Lowe's has a table of different liquids you can use to chemically sand the finish off so you can apply a fresh new coat:
