Floored- Part Two

We closed on our house on August 14 and moved in on the 28th so that really didn't leave us with much time to make all of the changes in our house. That being said, one of the most important priorities was the flooring.

Our entire house got re-floored. This includes the living room, kitchen and third floor loft which is also DH's man-room. For the living room and third floor, we knew we wanted to put a hardwood-like floor (hello laminate) but definitely not carpet. Before starting this project, the only places I knew of where to purchase flooring were Home Depot and Lowes. But after reading Young House Love, I learned about Lumber Liquidators. After checking them out on-line, their prices seemed reasonable and there was a store close by- 2 definite pluses.

With our tight time-line, DH and I didn't waste anytime and went to the closest store location. We actually went before the closing since we knew there would be little time to order everything and have it installed by our move-in date. We knew what our budget was and what we thought looked nice but definitely did not know anything else that went into picking out a floor (i.e. thickness of the planks, sound barriers, etc). After some browsing around, we settled on a laminate flooring- Monti Christi Mahogany to be exact. The color on the single plank in the store's show-room had a medium-brown color. The finish also had more of a sheen than some of the other flooring options.

The next week our order arrived and literally two days later, the floors started going in.

It was a pretty quick process and took about 4 days to finish everything up. Here are some photos of the progress and what the floors look like now:







The floors look a lot darker laid out than it did in the single plank but we love it. It's also one of the things in our house that we get the most compliments on. While I'm a little sorry we didn't go with real hardwood, the laminate is a dream to take care of and seems to never scratch or stain. Can't complain there!

The last step of our flooring experience was the installation of carpeting on the second floor. This really wasn't too exciting- after all, carpet is carpet. It was put in literally the day before we moved in. We enacted a rule of no shoes on the carpet in an attempt to keep it looking like new for as long as possible. We'll see how it goes!