Construction will be starting in 2 weeks! I’m having a hard time deciding on flooring for the dining area. Our location is concrete slab, they need a little patching and a lot of sanding. I’ve talked to 3 different floor guys and they are all trying to talk me into things that cost $3-5 a sq foot, that doesnt include any prep work. Im on a really tight budget and looking to spend $2 a foot. Commercial carpet and floating laminate planks seem to be the cheapest and need the least prep work. What do you have? Like it? Hate it? Advice?
I would not consider laminate a useable flooring for a restaurant as any standing water will make it buckle. If you wanted the look of laminate, go with a vinyl plank. It’s almost as easy to install and mostly more durable. Carpet is fine but expect to have it professionally cleaned on a regular basis. If I was setting something up with a dining room I would go with carpet or a wood grained porcelain tile. I’m not a flooring guy but I believe that carpet will be the floor covering that needs the most prep and the least prep would be tile. Thinset will cover many flaws in a concrete slab.
Good flooring now will you save you huge amounts of money later on.
As paul said, water gets into the flooring and destroys it. I currently have a tile floor in my dinning room area, and i would kill for a sealed concrete floor. Ease of cleaning, water is not an issue and chairs and tables never get “tilted.”
We currently have a painted concrete floor that makes me cringe every day that I look at it and have to mop it. It wasn’t painted or sealed properly and looks bad. I’m have been looking at using vinyl plank flooring that peels and sticks. I don’t expect this to be a lifetime solution as I don’t know if it’s designed to handle that much traffic or not. But it is inexpensive enough that I figure it can buy me 5 years or more. This is in our main area for carryout customers. When we remodel and add our dining room, I had been looking at laminate flooring. I have it in my home and it has held up to spills and our pets very well, so I don’t see how it shouldn’t hold up unless the traffic is too much for it. Obviously if you leave a big spill on it for too long it’s going to be bad. But I would hope we can get it cleaned up as quickly as possible and shouldn’t cause a problem.
I would vote to stay away from carpet. It holds stains and before long looks very bad. Every restaurant makeover show where they go into a restaurant that has carpet, that is the first thing to go and it makes sense to me after seeing it in use.
Keep us updated, I’d love to see how it goes since I hope to be doing a lot of remodeling this summer/fall. I’m still in the process of figuring out the best flooring for the kitchen area. I assume tile is best, but need to find something that can be cleaned easily but will be slip resistant.
currently have carpet, it is more quiet, did a lot of research for new location buildout and decided on LVP- luxury vynal plank, Karndean.com,only manufacturer with a non repeating pattern, 10 year commercial. looks like real wood 3.99 per sq ft, glue down over concrete,easy to replace a plank if damaged
Thanks for all the advice! I would love to just have the concrete stained/sealed but the only guy that does it within 40 miles of me would charge about $3600. And that is way more than I want to spend. I’ve looked at the glue down LVP and a local guy can get it for $1.29 sq ft. BUT…all the floor guys have told me I would need major prep to make the slab perfectly smooth before installation. Maybe I’ll just wait till I’m at that point and see how much money I have left? LOL
Our second location that we owned for 10 years had carpet in the customer eating area. Indoor/outdoor. I replaced it when I bought the place and replaced it twice more over the 10 years and would have it professionally steam-cleaned regularly. I had a huge amount of foot traffic of people wearing heavy skiboots so the indoor/outdoor stuff was needed to take the wear. If you go with carpet, use some mats on the entry and any other really heavy traffic spots and you will double the life of the overall installation.
Carpet gets nasty fast…had that in my sub shop…then it starts to smell, although you wont notice it because you are in it every day. Floating laminate is fine until you have a water issue…I had to replace the entire floor 1 year later. Go to Home Depot/Lowes and bid out the 0.79 per sqft tiles and then with install you should be good to go for as long as you own the shop. I am in the process of the same descission for my new shop although on a wood based floor over a crawl space. My dining room will have as I described but my kitchen will go cheap VCT tiles which are same cost as the ceramic but way cheaper to install and replace single tiles under the makelines, etc (anything heavy that moves).
Agree on tiles for all kitchen/work areas. We had an inexpensive tile everywhere which is easy to clean etc laid right over a concrete slab. Now after 17 years I guess we have replaced about 10-15% of it. Over time, some get cracked and replacing them is not hard. Last time we did, we put a gritty high traction tile in the dish area and in the front, customer pickup/entry area. We had a few cracked tiles in each area and rather than just replacing them, I re-tiled the whole area. If I had it to do over again though, I would opt for the higher traction tiles for a bit more money throughout.
When I came into our new location, the dining room was mostly carpeted, It was nasty, uncleanable, and a pain in my arse. Around some edges, It had large, very slippery, terrazzo tile. So, A year ago, I pulled up the carpeting and expected to find more of this obnoxiously slippery tile, but instead I found Maple Flooring. (why someone carpeted over that is beyond my comprehension.
After researching hardwood finishes, I decided to go old school with boiled linseed oil. It is not slippery, its a matte finish, any scuffing adds to the character, and a breeze to refinish once a year by stripping with DC-99 and a floor buffer, and I used a new pad on the buffer to lay down 3 new coats of oil.
Stay away from flooring that can be slippery when wet or damp. You don’t need “Slipping Jimmie” to come by.
I have ruled out the floating laminate. But I still have no clue. LOL I really think I’ll just put it on the back burner for now and see what my financials look like when I get closer to doing the floors. Thanks ya’ll!