Loving our Tavern Oak laminate flooring from Lowes!
When we first looked at this house we knew it would need new flooring throughout. The previous owners had put in vinyl tile flooring in the kitchen and then carpet throughout the rest of the house. The carpet wasn't in horrible condition, but it was dark and smelled like pets and later, as we discovered when we pulled it up, it had actually been soiled by the previous owners pets as well. We cleaned the carpet in the rest of the house, but ripped up the carpet in the main living/dining room. Including the kitchen, we had about 700 square feet of flooring to change out. Knowing that nice expensive laminate or hardwood flooring wasn't an option, we were eager to find something cheap and beautiful. We knew we wanted laminate, since we had a baby and a dog and I had heard from others and from my research that laminate tends to be more durable when it comes to kiddos and pets. We went to Lowes and found the Tavern Oak laminate flooring and LOVED the color and the best part was that it was only .99 cents a square foot! It ended up costing us less than $1000, including the underlayment, to get it all done. Now although it is beautiful and I love it, you do get what you pay for and I don't think I would install this in our forever home, but for our 7-10 year home it was perfect. Installing it was kind of pain because one, we are not experienced so it took us forever and two, we broke probably two to three boxes worth of boards. You also have to take into account the price of tools when you are planning on installing flooring yourself. We had NO tools what so ever so we had to buy all new tools, which was an expense we weren't originally counting on. We also had to buy underlayment and the mallet, spacers, etc. I watched a lot of videos before we started the installation and honestly, the easiest way to figure it out was to just go for it. I alternated the length of the boards by thirds when we started staggering them, so my first board was about 1/3 the original length, the second board was 2/3 and the third board was full length and then we repeated that all the way across the room. I would advise that you pay special attention to the expansion gap... we didn't and we are probably going to have to get really creative when we install the base boards, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. It took us about a month of working on the flooring every couple days and only doing a few rows at a time to get it all done. It took WAY longer than we thought, but working only on my husbands days off and only during our son's nap didn't give us much time to get things done. We also had to figure out how to install the flooring around our fireplace, which was hands down the most challenging thing we've done so far in this home reno. We ended up having to get a grinder, a couple of diamond blades, and a shop vac. We ended up having to cut about an inch into the stone on the fireplace so we could fit the boards underneath it. It was a nightmare and took about a week and half to do, but I am glad we took the time to do it because it looks so good! Anyway, so far the flooring has held up great to our son dropping everything on it, our bulldog running and drooling on it, and me accidentally spilling something on it just about every other day. Once we've been living on it for a little bit longer, I'll give y'all an update. In case y'all want a link to the flooring I attached the link below.
Thanks for reading y'all and enjoy checking out this beautiful flooring! (p.s. I got my booties from Target and I never want to take them off)
http://www.lowes.com/pd/Style-Selections-7-6-in-W-x-4-23-ft-L-Tavern-Oak-Embossed-Laminate-Floor-Wood-Planks/50047829
