My dad put bamboo (purchased at Costco) thruout his whole house about 5 years ago. It still looks good, though I haven't recently examined it carefully. He has no pets. But I remember something about high heels can ding it, now I can't recall whether that actually happened on his floor - either his got some dings somewhere, or he was advised to be careful about that. Whatever, it doesn't speak highly about the hardness.
Why don't you get some samples and do your own scratch tests? (Bamboo didn't hold up to my own tests.) There may be different grades of bamboo, as there are different kinds of oak, and different amounts of stress by different kinds of dogs.
If it ends up getting scratched, what will you do? Not sure it can be resanded/refinished. If ultimately replacing it is an option, and you have your heart set on it, go for it.
iFloor, which I linked to above, will send you free samples.
BTW we put ceramic tile thruout our downstairs, and hickory upstairs. At the time, I didn't even trust hickory would hold up so well. Now I can attest to the fact that it would have been fine. I think it's actually from NC where we live, but most of the images I found online were from houses at Lake Tahoe.
And one more option: there is a fairly inexpensive vinyl laminate plank floor that looks like bamboo. It's from Home Depot, and comes in about 3 shades of bamboo:
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...y?productId=202722422&storeId=10051&langId=-1
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100595234/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1
We recently put this type flooring in a rental house, don't know yet how it will hold up. We took a different pattern, because the bamboo was special-order only at our store and we were in a rush, but the lightest bamboo was the most attractive, and I spent a day trying to get that quickly enough instead. Definitely would have gone with that if we'd had another week or 2. (And I'm pretty picky about laminate floors, mostly I dislike their fake look.)
Why don't you get some samples and do your own scratch tests? (Bamboo didn't hold up to my own tests.) There may be different grades of bamboo, as there are different kinds of oak, and different amounts of stress by different kinds of dogs.
If it ends up getting scratched, what will you do? Not sure it can be resanded/refinished. If ultimately replacing it is an option, and you have your heart set on it, go for it.
iFloor, which I linked to above, will send you free samples.
BTW we put ceramic tile thruout our downstairs, and hickory upstairs. At the time, I didn't even trust hickory would hold up so well. Now I can attest to the fact that it would have been fine. I think it's actually from NC where we live, but most of the images I found online were from houses at Lake Tahoe.
And one more option: there is a fairly inexpensive vinyl laminate plank floor that looks like bamboo. It's from Home Depot, and comes in about 3 shades of bamboo:
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...y?productId=202722422&storeId=10051&langId=-1
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100595234/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1
We recently put this type flooring in a rental house, don't know yet how it will hold up. We took a different pattern, because the bamboo was special-order only at our store and we were in a rush, but the lightest bamboo was the most attractive, and I spent a day trying to get that quickly enough instead. Definitely would have gone with that if we'd had another week or 2. (And I'm pretty picky about laminate floors, mostly I dislike their fake look.)
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