Bamboo floor - are you happy? Recommendations?

[Wise1InOz]

After weeks of agonising over whether to go for hard timber or carpet or floating or bamboo, we've decided to go for strand woven bamboo, which is reportedly the hardest in the bamboo variety.

Has anyone got them and if so are you happy with your decision? Anything we should be aware of before installing?

Could you please provide your recommendations from where to buy and also for installing the same in Melbourne? How much can I expect to pay for an area roughly 150m2?

Thank you so much

 

[Anh]

After weeks of agonising over whether to go for hard timber or carpet or floating or bamboo, we've decided to go for strand woven bamboo, which is reportedly the hardest in the bamboo variety.

Has anyone got them and if so are you happy with your decision? Anything we should be aware of before installing?

Could you please provide your recommendations from where to buy and also for installing the same in Melbourne? How much can I expect to pay for an area roughly 150m2?

Thank you so much

Hi,

We had the bambo floor installed in our investment property over one year now, it seems to be ok, i can't remember the name, but depending on the purpose if for PPOR i personally would prefer the other type. I had Kenji ( i think) timber installed in our old place ($80/sqm) and it looked really nice.

 

[Wise1InOz]

Thanks. This is for our PPOR

I am getting a few peeps to come over to take measurements and quote on Monday. I'm hoping it won't be something ridiculously expensive...

 

[zapoix.]

Bamboo floor
I just installed one and very happy
It took longer than I thought it would
I used mososeal between each join to give a water proof seal highly recommended if you have pets / children
I paid about 7k for an area about that size and installed my self
If you are installing in PPOR. You will like the look if you are installing in rental I think renters will damage the floor by moving heavy furniture
It scratches easier than I would have thought
Brand mosowood
Office in home display centre on Dandenong road Oakleigh

 

[RumpledElf]

Prefinished wood does seem to scratch really easily. They sell you on how hard the wood is but the varnish on top is the problem.

We don't have bamboo but found the same thing, the kids track in sand and dirt and it gets under chairs/your feet/toys and scratches the floor.

 

[Wise1InOz]

Hi - I heard strand woven bamboo is really hard. Am planning to get medium gloss and a lighter shade so scratches won't show up easily. We don't wear our shoes inside the house and also getting felt fitted to the bottom of the legs of our furniture. Hopefully, this will reduce the incidence of scratches.

 

[zapoix.]

It will reduce scratches a great deal

 

[Hados]

Hi,

I have it installed in my PPOR and it's great. We have 2x big dogs (35kgs +) and haven't seen a single scratch on it as yet and we've been in the house for 6 months. Hope that helps with your decision

 

[undercover]

Fowles Auctions sell Bamboo for $59 sqm. I found them to be the chepest for the best brand. Bunnings does have it for $45 but heard its not that good.

Eventhou its the hardest jenka rating, it will still scratch and dint. It didn't survive the "key test" but I guess in some cases it just adds to the look and charm of the wood.

 

[eslampar]

Installed a natural colour ARC Strand Woven Bamboo flooring about 18 months ago. Yes, is very hard and has not scratched at all. If you are not very handy, i would advise on getting someone to install it for you, remembering you need to undercut architraves and put beading down against the skirting boards. My guy did my kitchen area, approx 20sqm for less than $300. Would definately use bamboo again

 

[Wise1InOz]

Thanks everyone We won't be attempting any DIY in this case. I don't have very young children. Plan to adopt a small dog in the future. Am ok with a few scratches and dints, which would happen even with hard timber floors.

Will check out Fowles auctions. I also got a few more names off the net that I plan to check out.

 

[handyandy]

Fowles Auctions sell Bamboo for $59 sqm. I found them to be the chepest for the best brand. Bunnings does have it for $45 but heard its not that good.

Eventhou its the hardest jenka rating, it will still scratch and dint. It didn't survive the "key test" but I guess in some cases it just adds to the look and charm of the wood.

Check on ebay as you can pick it up for less than $40 pm from quite a few sellers.

Bunnings now sell only 12mm boards. I started looking at bunnings at that time they had 14mm week later they only had 12mm and it seems to me much lesser quality.

Cheers

 

[streetie]

Has anyone put bamboo or other floating floor in the kitchen area? If so how did it go, after a few spills of water and other cooking products and constant wear and tear is it a bad idea?

Propably a very bad idea I guess too if ur planning on turning it into an IP in the future?

 

[Token Funder]

Has anyone put bamboo or other floating floor in the kitchen area? If so how did it go, after a few spills of water and other cooking products and constant wear and tear is it a bad idea?

Propably a very bad idea I guess too if ur planning on turning it into an IP in the future?

Had a commercial quality laminate floor (Witex)that lasted kids and dogs for 12 years but failed to survive the notorious dishwasher flooding incident of Xmas 2011.

Replaced this week with another laminate floor (Quick Step).

As long as you take a degree of care, the normal spills and whatnot aren't a problem in my experience.

 

[Beanie Girl]

I got my bamboo floor installed by The Timber Floor Centre at 6/200 Plenty Road, Preston, Vic 3072 last October. We chose the Natural colour, strand woven bamboo by GreenEarth. We liked the fact that it was 1.83m long and 14mm thick with a Janka rating of 15. We didn't know about bamboo until my floor polisher put us onto it. The original part of my PPOR had 1950s hardwood long timber floors but the sunroom and bedroom extension had corkboard flooring so we installed bamboo in the sunroom & bedroom extension as well as the kitchen.

The Timber Floor Centre at Preston is kinda like a factory clearance outlet. The showroom is not fancy, it's like a warehouse showroom with a variety of solid timber, laminates, floating timber floors as well as bamboo. The solid timber floor strips were much less than 130mm wide so didn't suit the rest of the house's original hardwood floors. Didn't like the floating timber floors because it was only 3mm of hardwood face, so bamboo was the best compromise for us. We paid roughly $50 per sq metre for the bamboo and $20 per sq metre Click-locking system installation, if I can recall correctly (have to dig out my receipt). It includes the installation of beading on the skirting.

Their website is http://www.timberfloorcentre.com.au
Hope this helps.

As for the installation of bamboo in the kitchen, am quite happy with it. When there's spills of large amounts of water on it, it doesn't soak through at all, I just quickly wipe it up with paper towels or a soft floor rag. I think the trick is not to leave pools of water lying on the floor for too long and I think that probably goes for any wooden floors, not just bamboo.

 

[Gremlin]

...but failed to survive the notorious dishwasher flooding incident of Xmas 2011.

See, there's your problem. Whenever I inspect a place I always ask how it survived the dishwasher flooding incident of 1974. Of course, the dishwasher back then wasn't some fancy high falutin' machine. Rather it was Old Uncle George who had overly imbibed and left the tap running.

Real estate agents used to think I was mad. "It'll never flood again like it did in '74," they'd say. "Dishwashers these days have got this dam(n!) function to reduce the overflow."

But I knew that sooner or later, something bigger than '74 would come along again, so I bought on the high side of the dishwasher. So who's laughing now, I ask you? Who's laughing now?!?

(Apologies to my fellow Queenslanders who lived through the floods)

 

[Wise1InOz]

Thanks for all that info Beanie, much appreciated!

 

[RumpledElf]

Has anyone put bamboo or other floating floor in the kitchen area? If so how did it go, after a few spills of water and other cooking products and constant wear and tear is it a bad idea?

We had Ikea floating floors in the kitchen. In 2 years the only water damage was in front of the oven where apparently the oven sorta leaks liquid a little at the front. But where our chairs were we scuffed the top printed layer with the colour in it down to the white underneath, and even down to the mdf in parts.

Never touching that stuff again.

 

[WendellR]

Has anyone put bamboo or other floating floor in the kitchen area? If so how did it go, after a few spills of water and other cooking products and constant wear and tear is it a bad idea?

Propably a very bad idea I guess too if ur planning on turning it into an IP in the future?

We have a floating laminate wood floor in our kitchen and living room. It's had it's share of spills and there hasn't been any problems with it in the four years we've had it. In fact, we had a China cabinet full of dishes fall over and break apart on the floor and there wasn't any scratches that I can see which I was surprised. I like the bamboo floors but I always thought they would be softer and scratch easier.

 

[Beanie Girl]

The good thing about bamboo is that because the individual pieces are joined by a click-locking system, if one or two or more planks get damaged because of an extreme incident, it's easy to remove the damaged planks and replace them with new, same colour ones. It's cheap, cost-effective and your heart doesn't break as if it was expensive hard-to-find Italian tiles.

I've had the bamboo floor for over a year now and I haven't had any serious dints, gouges or scratches. It really has to be something extreme like a careless mover dropping/dragging the edge of your refrigerator on the bamboo floor accidentally (heavy weight + sharpness) or you've left the house for a few days and the kitchen tap bursts/leaks.

My bamboo floor has a semi-gloss German Treffert UV acrylic urethane finish which is supposed to provide extra anti-scratch and abrasion resistance. But my floor polisher said that he could do sanding down and polishing of the bamboo if we wanted to spruce it up in later years. He reckons he could do this sanding down and polishing a maximum of 2 times. So this current finish and 2 sanding/polishing spaced apart in the future should last us a good many years, methinks.

Having said that, I still absolutely adore polished hardwood timber floors, especially the long and extra wide panels you find in older houses. But I guess bamboo is more ecologically friendlier, cheaper to replace and harder. Jarrah hardwood is so beautiful but it's Janka rating is only 8.5 compared to bamboo's Janka rating of 15. I'm also sad about the deforestation of hardwood timber which takes 50-60 years to hit maturity. Bamboo takes only 3-5 years to mature, then grows again. So Bamboo's a very green choice, the other green choice if you absolutely love and must have hardwood timber is to find recycled timber flooring!