This weekend Stephen and I made a huge decision.
And by huge, I mean 1800 sq ft huge. We’re getting wood floors!
Katrina actually guessed our news after Monday’s post. We’ve been talking about installing new flooring in our home since the day we bought it. Nearly four years later, a few things have happened to finally allow us to do it: 1) A better income 2) Paying off our second car 3) Deciding we didn’t have to do it ourselves.
Stephen and I stopped by our local Carpet One store on Friday to see what they had to offer. We’ve been stalking the flooring in Lowe’s and Home Depot for years but had never been to a specialty flooring store (mostly because we didn’t want the sales pitch).
After looking at dozens of floor samples and talking about what we liked (me: medium tones, dark grain, wide planks; Stephen: gray tones, fainter grains, wide planks), our flooring guy, Kevin, introduced us to the [invincible.] line of engineered hardwood floors.
The key factor that made this brand the right choice for us? They have a 50 year finish warranty! That means that Miss Molly can play with her tennis ball inside the house as much as she wants and these floors are guaranteed not to scratch!
That fact alone was enough to sell us on the brand, so we brought some samples home to see how they looked in our house. The decision once we saw them in our living room was easy – the one on the right!
We went with this medium brown tone (that wasn’t too red) instead of something darker because we hear it’s better for hiding dust and dirt. It’s Caldwell Oak flooring in Antler Brown. Lucky for us, that color was on sale (40% off) and since we’ll be covering more than 1000 sq ft, we got the 5″ planks for the same price per square foot as the 3″ ones.
Ready for a preview of how it’ll look in our house? I was like a kid in a candy store hauling this sample all over Heardmont and taking pictures. Here it is in our living room…
Under our dining room table… I love how the dark dining room furniture pulls out the dark knots and grain of the wood.
I even mocked up the sample with a bit of baseboard in our hallway. I think I’m almost as excited about having all white trim in our house as I am about the new floors.
But the fun doesn’t end there. While we were at Carpet One, we figured, what the heck, why not look at carpet samples while we’re at it? 
Just take a look at how plush the carpet sample we brought home was compared to our shaggy living room turf. We knew when we moved in that the “new” carpet in our house was the least expensive stuff on the market, but I hadn’t realized how badly worn our carpet was until I compared it to this sample.
I couldn’t even dig my fingers down to the backing on the new stuff! It has a 25 year texture warranty, which means that it won’t get thinner in high traffic areas and is guaranteed to spring back even after being smushed under a heavy piece of furniture for years.
We had Kevin give us a rough quote on the cost of just the hardwoods and then one with the carpet added in. Since we’ll be spending a big chunk on the wood, he was able to give us their highest quality carpet (Lee’s) for our master bedroom and guest room at the advertised price per square foot and included the top quality pad and installation for free. Kind of a no-brainer at that point!
We chose the lightest colored carpet sample (on the right in the photo below) because we wanted the carpet to read as a neutral element in the bedrooms.
I still can’t believe that four years later, we are finally going to have cohesive flooring in this place. It’s going to feel like a completely different house!
The best part about the process was that once we decided to do it, we found out that the timeline for installation is very short. We officially ordered our flooring Monday, and if all goes according to plan, the wood will be delivered to our house today and installation will start on Monday.
It should take 3-4 days for the crew to finish the wood floors, and by that time, the carpet will have arrived and will be installed a week from today. By this time next week we could (should) have all new floors.
Cross your fingers that all goes well between now and then. I can’t wait to share all the details along the way and final before and after photos when it’s all done! Eeek!
Update: We just found out that the wood floors are back-ordered at the warehouse until the end of the month. :-/ I guess now we can purchase and paint all new baseboards at our leisure instead of trying to get them done this weekend, right? We’ll be sure to update as the floor project progresses!
