Bamboo Flooring

Thanks for all the bamboo feedback after the last post! It is really time for us to come to a decision and order our floors soon. We are going to have the same floors throughout the house, in every room, except 3 of the bathrooms.  When we were in the early stages of planning, we alloted a very small amount per square foot in our original contract so, unless we want to peel and stick our floors, we are going to need to pitch in a significant amount of money.  We do want hardwood and have quickly realized how difficult it is to get a good looking, high quality floor on a budget.  The biggest problem is that at any price, 1750 sq. ft. of flooring adds up very fast!

Here are the samples that we have ordered online and have found in stores.

In a previous post, I mentioned that Sam found a couple of bamboo floors for $1.99 but after putting the dark samples to the test, just saw that they scratched and dented very easily.  The exception was the carbonized bamboo that Anthony bought from iFloor (I am pretty sure we have the same sample). It seemed like a great floor but it was just a little too light.  We have been planning on dark floors from the beginning so, if we can afford to do so, hopefully we can stick to our plan! 

Of all of the samples we ordered, Ambient Floors seemed to be, at first glance, the best quality and the most durable. This was all according to my testing methods which were: scraping it with a key, then a penny and then poking it very hard with various things I could get my hands on. 

Ambient had 2 darkly stained floors that passed my tests with flying colors so I decided to take them to the house and see how they looked in the natural light:

This is strand woven bamboo. Like the carbonization process, weaving the bamboo under pressure adds a lot of strength.  Bamboo of either carbonized or woven types are recommended for households with a lot of traffic, children or pets. 

This is a sample of hand scraped bamboo. I believe this technique is for esthetics rather than strength. 

In the natural light, the hand scraped sample looked more brownish/red and the strand woven was more of a chocolate color:

Sam was not a fan of the ridges in the hand scraped floor and we both liked the color of the strand woven better.  It is still a little scary going with a dark floor but Ambient claims that they put 8 coats of finish on every type of bamboo and they come with a 30 year guarantee on the finish and lifetime structural guarantee.  Spending a little more might be worth that piece of mind. 

We took all of the measurements again today to double check our square footage. It should be within the next few days that we make a final decision.  I really, really cannot wait until this decision is behind us! Your feedback is helpful and, as always, greatly appreciated!