Dream Home - Kensington Manor  12mm Rio Grande Valley Oak Laminate

We just had our most of our first floor installed with this. There was very little waste. I had figured in 10%, but that was too much. I'll use the rest on a different part of my house. This product is beautiful. The wide planks look like real wood. My installer said it was very easy to install. His only complaint was that on some of the planks, the attached underlayment overhung the plank, or wasn't attached properly. Not a big deal, was easy to fix. I purchased this with the Bella premium underlayment because I wanted a quiet floor. It definitely is quiet. The floor has a little bounce to it in some areas. For the price, you can't beat it!!!

Service and delivery comments:

Was delivered on time to the store. The guys at the store were super helpful. They held the flooring for about a week before I could pick it up.

Easy to install

Floor has a great look to it. But the locking tabs come apart very easy. I do not recommend using this floor for a large room.

I absolutely love this floor. It has a stunning appearance and is gentle in the joints

I wrote a 5 star review right after we put these floors down. I went on and on about how great they were. I probably should have waiting until we actually used them before I wrote my review. It's been about 3-4 months and they have scratches EVERYWHERE. With wood floors the scratches will somewhat blend in with the color of the floor. On these laminate floors it is ugly white scratches everywhere. I do still love the look of them, but they would be better off in a room that doesn't get a lot of activity. In my house with kids and dogs it appears that this was just a waste of a lot of money. At least with wood you can sand out scratches if you wanted. I'm just stuck with white scratched laminate now and have only had these floors for a few months. I could never recommend anyone to spend their money on these floors knowing they do not hold up to day to day activity.

The product is excellent and was installed by a professional contractor I hired. They liked the flooring.

Service and delivery comments:

The product arrived quickly. Watch the amount you order. The website jacks up the number of cases over the square footage entered. I manually reduced it by over 10 cases. When the job was done, I returned the 4 cases I didn't open and found that there was a 20% restocking fee.

Anyone who says "I don't like laminate" is behind the times. Case in point: Kensington Manor 12mm laminate. It looks more like wood than wood, with a mild 'hand scraped' finish, and it has padding pre-mounted, so you don't need any underlay, which makes it warm and solid under your feet. It's made in the USA, and the quality is great - we didn't have a bad piece in any of the boxes, and installed 700 sq. ft.

First time having a laminate. Installed over concrete slab/dining room/ground floor. 12'x11' room with two entryways. Accounted for expansion/edge of 1/4" or so all the way around....easiest to remove base boards before installation. Easy to measure and cut but the snap lock edges gave us trouble. Could not get most of them to 'snap' or 'lock' in place. Had to fight separation of planks multiple times. Ended up gluing in places. Will look for a glued/nailed flooring option for other rooms. End result is gorgeous but was dissappointed with the extra effort needed beyond the 'easy to install grooves'.

We searched for laminate floors for MONTHS before deciding on this. I'm really glad we did. It is a darker BROWN color without a glossy finish. That was actually quite hard to find since everything else seemed to have red undertones. I also love that since it is not glossy it doesn't show dust or foot prints. The laminate is also textured so I am convinced that if we do ever get a dent/ding/scratch it wouldn't even be noticeable. These floors are extremely durable. I have even taken coins and tried my hardest to put scratches in it and it held up to that without any scratches.

Installation was quite simple once we got past the initial awkwardness of door jams and such. We were able to install 700 square feet in a day and a half with 3 kids and 2 dogs running around. In all the boxes that we bought we did not have a single warped or unusable piece of laminate which really surprised me.

The only complaint I have with the floor is that it seems squishy. We have real hardwood in our bedroom (which would not have been practical at all in the living areas with small kids and dogs) and they are extremely sturdy. The laminate just does not feel like "real" wood under your feet at all. It does LOOK real, but you can even see it flex when you walk on it in some places. Maybe that happens with all laminate or floating floors, but I was expecting something more sturdy feeling.

All in all, I am happy with the quality, look, and price of these floors. If we decide in the future to remove carpet in other rooms I will buy this product again without hesitation.

I chose this flooring based on the reviews and of course the look of it was beautiful. I had to wait a few weeks for it to go on sale, but it was well worth the wait. My friend Maria came over to help me.. and we two girls did such an awesome job laying it ourselves....I'm so impressed with how it looks so far. I was going to pay an installer 1000.00 to do it and Im so happy I decided to lay it myself.. very easy!! and way tooooo beautiful!!! ok, gotta go finish laying the flooring now :)