A Family of Geeks

Sorry for the big breaks between posts. It’s just lately I don’t feel like I’ve got anything to say and I hate blogs where you can tell the owner is just posting for the sake of posting.

We’ve finished the floors on the first floor. And by we I mean Mr. because I sure wasn’t doing anything besides supervising.

Anyways, the end cost turned out to be a shade under $1,200 for 700 square feet (we did the foyer, the hall, the kitchen and the dining room all at once.) That price includes the laminate, the pad, the quarter round trim and all the assorted other minor things you need. We were fortunate that we were able to borrow the miter saw and other tools from a friend and several friends came over to help lay the actual floor down.

We went with laminate over engineered or true hard wood because of a) durability and b) cost. From what we understand, engineered isn’t as durable as laminate and in order to get one of the truly durable hardwoods (not all hardwoods are the same hardness) we’d be looking at around $5 a sq.foot and up. For that money, we could replace the laminate 3 times. To be honest, the laminate isn’t as good looking as a really nice hardwood, but I don’t really stare at my floor.

We also went with self-installation because we’re cheap (installation started at $1.99 a sq.foot, which would have doubled our cost) and because we choose a ‘floating’ laminate with click installation. Click installation laminate is not only easier to install because it snaps together, but you don’t have to worry about what’s underneath unless it’s remarkably uneven or you are working directly on the subfloor.

I wish I had some better pictures of the before floor (nasty, white vinyl laminate that hadn’t been taken care of so the stains just wouldn’t come up) but here are some shots.

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