Flooring

Choosing flooring proved to be a stressful experience.  The flooring supplier had a huge selection, but had a rather small showroom that was only open on weekdays, so we had to take vacation to make our selections.  It was hard to visualize a room from the small samples, especially for types of flooring that have intentional variation.  In the end, we were thrilled with the result, if not the process.

Some people advised us that we should look into something called luxury vinyl plank (LVP) which is vinyl designed to look like hardwood but to cost less and wear much better.  We were nervous about how it would look, so we didn't want to commit to using it throughout all of the areas we had planned to use wood.  We didn't find any samples that excited us, so we passed on that option.

We selected an engineered wood floor (often called wood laminate) for most of the house.  That selection was made several months before the time to order the materials.  When it was time for the flooring company to order the materials, they found that the pattern and texture we selected wasn't actually offered as engineered floor.  We had to decide whether to change to a hand-scraped texture, change to hardwood at substantial extra cost, or start over and select something completely different.  We didn't like the hand-scraped texture.  We spend a little time looking for other options and considered changing to bamboo flooring, but the flooring supplier said he hadn't had good results with that.  We ended up changing to hardwood and changing some areas to carpet in order to reduce the cost impact.

Throughout these changes, it was a challenge to make sure that what got ordered matched our latest decision.  It was also difficult to keep up with the budget implications.  During the process, we believed that we were staying near our allowance.  When the final bills came in, we found that we had substantially overspent.

This is the hardwood that is used through most of the main floor and the upstairs.

We used carpet throughout most of the basement and on the stairways.  The utility room and workshop have bare concrete floor.

I was surprised one day to find that the master bedroom was carpeted, since we had selected hardwood for that room.  Fortunately, the flooring installer agreed that it was a mistake and returned to install the correct flooring.

In the laundry room and two of the bathrooms, we used luxury vinyl tile (LVT) which is designed to look like tile at a fraction of the cost.  As mentioned in a previous post, the master bathroom is tiled.