Hard Wood Floors/Stairs with kids

[lisam]

Dh and I bought a house and are closing in September. The upstairs is all carpet, which needs to be replaced. The seller is giving us a flooring allowance of $5,000.00 upon closing. This is our forever home, it has 4 bedrooms, hallway, and staircase.

We definitely want to carpet the kids' bedrooms and were thinking about putting hardwood floors in the hallway and on the staircase. We are undecided about also putting hardwood in our bedroom, as it would be expensive. I think we'll be putting some money in anyways, but would like to minimize the amount and still like what we get.

Anyways, my real question is if you have hardwood in your hallway and/or on your staircase, do you find it okay with kids or would you just carpet it all? I don't really love the look of carpet outside of bedrooms, but am a bit worried about kids slipping down the stairs. I also don't want to put down carpet with the plan on ripping it up down the line when our current and future kids are older. So I'm a bit torn.

Any opinions welcome. Thanks!

[Deleted]

We have hardwood floors throughout our house and haven't had a problem with them and young kids. I'm like you, I'm not crazy about carpeting outside of kids' bedrooms either. I'd put hardwood down in your bedroom.

[pierogigirl]

I really dislike carpet (except area rugs). We have hardwood and would put hardwood in any house that didn't have it. We haven't had any problems with the kids on the hardwood floors, but the stairs do make me nervous. We gate the stairs.

[Deleted]

We have the same setup (4 bed, hall, stair) & no wall to wall. It's fine having an all hardwood house.

[greekypie]

Our home is 100% hardwood and we have a toddler - he's surviving just fine. :-)

[lala]

Another w/ 100% hardwood. We ripped up all carpets and refinished it all before we moved in and would do the same again. If I was buying a house, I wouldn't look at ones that didn't have hardwood unless I could afford to do it all.

Both DDs have been fine. Kids fall, it hurts regardless. Hardwoods don't stain and are much easier to clean in general b/c of that. No icky dirt or pee or whatever lurking under the fibers.

We do gate the bottom of the stairs, but I would probably do that regardless of what kind of flooring we had - DD is pretty good at crawling up them, but I can't have her crawling upstairs when I'm not there.

[matildasun]

For what it is worth I have a crazy staircase. It is horribly steep, I jokingly call it the stairwell of doom. When it was carpeted I fell at least once a year and slipped about once a month. Since taking out the carpet I have not had any problems. We have not redone the stairs yet, so they are not slick though.

[thatgirl2478]

we have hardwood through out the main part of our house (raised ranch, the family room is in the basement and is - for now - carpeted). Since our family room is under construction right now, we have been hanging out in our main house. During this time, DD started walking - which of course means a lot of falling. We haven't had any problems. No injuries, nothing.

If you want wood floors - get them. They are cleaner than carpet any way. Your kids will learn that they are hard.

I grew up in a house with wood floors almost everywhere except the back stair case - guess which stair case we fell down most frequently - the back stairs! It wasn't because of the carpet, it was because we were morons and thought it looked like fun to ride a laundry basket down them. It was fun - until we hit the tile in the kitchen...

[lisam]

Thanks for all the words of encouragement! Both sets of grandparents brought up the slippage factor, granted, they also both came from a time when carpeting was the thing to do. My father described wood steps as "bone breaking", so I thought I should "ask around", haha. We do plan on gating the steps at the top and bottom, so I think it should be fine and that we'll all survive.

[sewpinkgal]

We have a single story home and hardwood floors throughout. He falls on them, but no more than he'd fall on carpeted floors. I would get what you'd like the best and the kids will learn to live with it.

[zeewifeandmama]

We have hardwood everywhere. We actually ripped out the carpet on our stairs because we kept falling on the carpeted stairs. None of us have ever fallen on the wood stairs...however we have been contemplating putting no slip strips on the stairs just in case.

[jena]

We have wood stairs. We moved here when DD was 3yo and DS was 9mo. No one has had a real fall on them yet.

We have these crazy things called "rules" that we make the kids abide by... one of them is that you must hold the handrail. Another is that there is no playing on the stairs - no stopping, no going backwards, no zooming your toy car around. At first we also had a no-sock-feet on the stairs rule, but the hold on to the handrail rule seems to be enough.

Oh yeah, and that laundry basket thing on carpeted stairs thatgirl mentioned? It doesn't turn out much better if you use nylon sleeping bags as your sled and hit the wall instead of tile.

[anna7602]

Our home in the U.S. has hardwood floors and were never a problem with DD. I have an area rug in her bedroom for under the rocking chair because I didn't want to damage the floor there.

The apartment we are renting now also has hardwood floors, although many more area rugs around. The area rugs actually kind of annoy me. They're a lot harder to clean than if we had just hardwood.

Can't comment on the stairs, all our homes have been one level.

[oukapu]

She will take her sorting shapes bucket and rapidly drag it across the floor to make noise. Other than that, no issues.

[vanillacourage]

The only thing I'd be concerned about is the stairs. Can you hardwood them with a removable carpet runner?

[thatgirl2478]

Jul 21, 2012 23:38:25 GMT -5 jena said:

We have wood stairs. We moved here when DD was 3yo and DS was 9mo. No one has had a real fall on them yet.

We have these crazy things called "rules" that we make the kids abide by... one of them is that you must hold the handrail. Another is that there is no playing on the stairs - no stopping, no going backwards, no zooming your toy car around. At first we also had a no-sock-feet on the stairs rule, but the hold on to the handrail rule seems to be enough.

Oh yeah, and that laundry basket thing on carpeted stairs thatgirl mentioned? It doesn't turn out much better if you use nylon sleeping bags as your sled and hit the wall instead of tile.

Glad to hear my brother and I weren't the only ones with moronic ideas!

[lisam]

Jul 22, 2012 9:20:04 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

The only thing I'd be concerned about is the stairs. Can you hardwood them with a removable carpet runner?

I think we could definitely do a runner if we needed to, then it wouldn't be so permanent. I just didn't want to do something so permanent that I knew I wouldn't like right away.

[curbsideprophet]

Our home is all one level, so we do not have any stairs to worry about, but we have hardwoods throughout most of the house. There are hardwoods in the bedrooms, hallways and most of the main living areas. The sunroom is tile and the kitchen is natural linoleum. It has not been an issue.

[af1212]

Our house is entirely hardwood except for the bathroom and kitchen. Both my mother and I have taken nasty falls on hardwood stairs in our lives, causing me to have a slight fear of stairs in general. We have something like these on our stairs and love them: www.solutions.com/jump.jsp?itemID=3406&itemType=PRODUCT
They were cheap, easy to clean, and do the job of keeping us from falling.