flooring
we need to rip up the carpet in the upstairs of our house.
1. its old and lousy, and was when we bought the house 3.5 yrs ago. And now DH has spilled paint on it. and
2. it cannot be good for the allergies.
We live in a tri-level built in 1974. Older neighborhood. Nice area, but the homes are NOT showplace. No huge master baths etc... we want something we will love, but that if we sell in 5 yrs will still fit the neighborhood...
we would put it through the whole house except the kitchen and downstairs playroom (whic we recarpeted when we moved in). We have a hidious faux brick entryway . may or may not do in the bathrooms (thoughts?)
The bathrooms need new vanities and whole house molding and doors...
Currently there is laminate in the livingroom/dining room. It sucks. The former owners installed themselves and did a shot job, as well as the molding being shotty...
so, bamboo, engineered hardwood? what do you like? self install (oh the hell) or paid installation ($$ but someone else deals...)
Re: flooring
We are in the process of ripping out all our old carpet and redoing are hardwood floors. We were not planning to stay in house that long but with the current housing market the way it is, looks like we are going to be here for a few more years. ( 3 house for sale one on each corner of our street). We went to a place called Great Floors ( they have many locations) they have tons of carpet in all different price ranges, they have already installed carpet in our upstairs and did a pretty good job. They will be installing carpet in the bedrooms next week. They have a lot of carpet in stock so they can install in fast. We are buying our Oak hardwood materials from a place called Meyer Floors ( in Tacoma) my hubby and BIL are going to install the hardwoods (BIL lays hardwoods professionally). We went with Oak because of the durability factor with a little one, 2 Goldens and 2 cats.
Good luck. If you go to the Great Floors in Kent, ask for Stu.
love the look of bamboo but what we've learned is it's not as hard and therefore may not be ideal for kids/pets/heavy furniture for resale. We will go with engineered hard wood. We've been shopping and ifloors has probably what will be the best deal with installation.
oh we have horrible vinyl in the bathrooms... not carpet. I would have walked from that!
Im not sure about tile ... our bathrooms are relatively small...
I've heard the same thing about bamboo scratching easily. It looks lovely until a kid or pet steps foot on it.
We have tile in all our bathrooms and I love it. It is a darker greenish-grey Italian slate (done before we bought the place) and it looks great and is easy to clean. Especially when little people pee on it right before bath time.
My mom just bought hardwoods and tile for her house, I'll ask her where she got it. She's having a couple friends install who do that for a living so I'm not much help there. But, I can ask her where she purchased.
Hardwood. Possibly bamboo. No cork. I am not a an of vinyl flooring. Tile can be found inexpensively or you can be like me and say "what the heck! get the pricey stuff! It's only Xsqft!" You could do some fun stuff with Marmoleum for the kids bathroom. Does Porter spend much time n the kids rooms? Fresh low pile carpet and a Dyson and no cooties form the old owners might fix the allergy issue.
We're DIYers (and by "we" I mean J) so hire it out!
This! Our house came with bamboo which is gorgeous if you don't have 2 kids and a dog. So many scratches
Jen - Mom to Jillian (10/2008) and Hayden (4/2010)
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