The Dangers Of Installing Wood Floors In Bathrooms

Question:

Install a Mannington wood plank floor in a bathroom. The shower will be used on 4X month. I am worried about small children that miss the toilet and pee on the floor. Will the odor seep into the wood?

Answer:

Dear Sarina

Please reconsider this. Any solid wood or even the laminated wood in such a wet area is courting disaster. I’ve had to resand such floor in main floor powder rooms (no shower there), and after only just a few years the wood on either side of the toilet was rotten and smelly, from just what you said, pee. Also there is a great potential for sweating pipes (during the summer), to add so much moisture to the wood, that it will swell up and push agaist a wall or pipe or toilet and create another disaster. I’ve had to repair floor that had swollen so much that the door wouldn’t open, we had to take it off the hinges. So in short no, it woudn’t be OK.

As always your Most humble servant, Joseph, the Wood Floor Doctor.