Shaw Floors Reviews: A Dog-Friendly Office Renovation FAQ

I’m the office administrator for a 270-person pet-insurance company. I handle purchasing across about a dozen vendors—roughly $300,000 a year once you include facilities work. I report to operations and finance, so I keep a spreadsheet for every decision. In 2024, we replaced most of our office flooring and added a dog-wash area for employees who bring their dogs to work. After reading too many Shaw floors reviews and going through the renovation, I put together the FAQ I wish I had read before we started.

1. Does Shaw pet proof carpet hold up in a dog-friendly office?

I was skeptical about the phrase “pet proof.” It sounds like a marketing claim, not a specification. But for our space, it really was the better product.

We have thirty-plus dogs in the office on a normal day. The open office and the main hallway have Shaw pet proof carpet. After fourteen months, we have handled two pet accidents, one hairball, and a spilled bottle of pumpkin supplement. The spots cleaned up without a visible stain. Dog nails have not been a problem, though we put chair mats at every desk and we use a hard-surface mat under the mail cart.

Let me rephrase that: this isn’t a forcefield. The carpet is good, but the seams are still the weak point. One seam near the kitchen door started to look a little fuzzy because a supply cart rolled over it. I would have chosen hard surface in that exact path if I did it again.

2. What really happens when someone spills a drink or drops a glass bottle on it?

The first big spill was not coffee. Our breakroom has a small recycling bin for glass bottles, and someone knocked it over. Two bottles broke and a third leaked. I thought the broken glass would cut the carpet fiber. It didn’t. The sticky label glue and the sugary drink residue attracted dirt until I cleaned it a second time. If you keep glass bottles near carpet, the glue residue is honestly more annoying than the liquid.

A few weeks later, someone dropped a glass bottle of kombucha outside a meeting room. The bottle didn’t break, but the drink pooled and sat for about twenty minutes. I blotted it with a clean cloth and rinsed with warm water. You can’t tell where it happened. Blot, don’t scrub. Scrubbing pushes the liquid deeper and makes the pile look fuzzy.

3. Is a frameless shower door worth the cost in a pet-wash area?

This was the line item I fought. The original plan for our dog-wash alcove included a frameless shower door. I changed it to a heavy-duty shower curtain to cut costs. Bad decision. The curtain moved with the spray and never kept water inside the wash bay. The floor outside stayed wet, which made me worry about slips and about water getting under the edge of the nearby Shaw carpet.

We ordered the frameless shower door in the end. I want to say it cost around $2,100, but I might be misremembering the exact figure. The vendor also charged a rush fee, maybe $450, to guarantee the installation date because we had an office event. At first I saw that as an unnecessary charge for speed. In my experience, it’s really a charge for certainty. If the work had slipped another week, we would have been hosting an event in a construction zone. I now budget for delivery certainty in deadline situations instead of trusting a vague, probably-on-time promise.

Would a curtain work elsewhere? Sure. But for a real dog-wash area, the frameless shower door was not cosmetic. It kept the floor dry and made cleaning easier.

4. How do you get rid of gnats in the house or office after a renovation?

If your search history includes “how to get rid of gnats in house,” this part is for you. Three weeks after the renovation, small flies showed up in the bathroom near the dog-wash room. The frameless shower door was working fine—the dry floor was not the issue. The flies were drain flies. The shower drain had a thin organic film inside the pipe because dog hair and shampoo had built up.

We tried the vinegar-bowl trick. It caught a few, but it didn’t solve the problem. The fix that worked was mechanical: remove the drain cover, scrub the pipe, use an enzyme drain cleaner, and flush with hot water every night for about a week. After that, the flies disappeared. If a shower or floor drain is not used regularly, run water through it once a week so the trap doesn’t dry out.

5. What do Shaw floors reviews leave out?

Most Shaw floors reviews focus on one question: does it hold up? For us, the answer is yes. What the reviews didn’t prepare me for was the installation side of the experience.

Our carpet pallet arrived late, and the freight driver would not take it up to the second floor. The installer had to hand-carry fifty-plus boxes from the ground floor. That added most of a day. The product itself was fine, but I did not choose the product alone—I now evaluate the whole vendor logistics chain.

There was also a noticeable new-carpet smell for the first two or three weeks. Three employees complained, so we ran two air purifiers and opened windows whenever weather allowed. It faded, but I would budget a ventilation period in any future project. Reviews don’t mention that. My experience is based on about 2,300 square feet of office space over fourteen months. If you are buying Shaw for a veterinary clinic, rental property, or residential house, your experience might differ. That’s why I take claims like “pet proof” as a starting point, not a guarantee.