The home renovation process has started. Before we moved into our new house, we ripped up all the carpeting. It was dirty and stained, and just gross. And there were wooden floors underneath! Our plan was to refinished the original wood. After some examination though, we discovered that the floors underneath were in too poor shape to refinish. They were covered in thick black carpet glue. That is a pain in the butt to remove, but do-able. The boards themselves were warped, cracked, and some were missing. Not only that, but they were also made of a very thin wood. I was rooting for the original floors, but it just wasn’t going to happen. Option two: lay down new floors. We checked out our options at homedepot.com. We were thinking about doing some sort of a laminate plank floor, but that all changed when we went into the store to look a little closer. I had my little list of styles and colors to look at, and none of them looked like what I had in my head once we were in person. The guy at Home Depot showed us a pretty neat new product called Resilient Vinyl Flooring. You can find all sorts of tutorials and information online about it. I won’t talk too much about the technical aspects of it, but I will point out some cool features and reasons we chose it.
1: It’s durable. It’s not supposed to scratch, break, or crack. The planks themselves are much thinner than any laminate planks that we would find, but thicker and more durable than any other kind of vinyl. Really, it’s nothing like the rolls of vinyl you’ve known before, so forget everything you know!
2: It’s green. No, not the color. It’s made from recycled car tires. Who doesn’t like saving the earth?!
3: It’s kid proof. It forms a waterproof seal, which means it’s safe for the kitchen and bathroom. No fears of it bubbling up or getting water damaged. It won’t scratch easily (though we discovered with the sample, you can tear it apart with a razor blade, but who lets their kids play with those?) Not only is it good and durable, it also has a 25 year warranty. This stuff would be ideal for people who rent out homes and are in constant fear of their floors getting destroyed.
4: It’s cheap and easy to install. These two go hand in hand. Most other forms of flooring require some sort of product to lay underneath it. They don’t tell you that part while you’re pricing it out! We had our budget set, we found a flooring that fit into that budget, and bam, we get in the store and see the rolls of stuff that go underneath it, and they were another chunk of change. I think the one we were looking at was roughly 40 cents per square foot. Not too expensive, but it really adds a chunk to your total price (especially when you’re doing 600 square feet like we were). This type of flooring does NOT require that. In fact, it doesn’t require anything. It’s a floating floor, so you just set it right on top of your existing floor, as long as the existing floor is even and flat enough. Little bumps don’t show through as easily as regular laminate because this products is much thicker and stiffer. So when you buy your flooring, all you need is the product. No glue, no padding, nothing. For 600 some odd square feet, our grand total was less than $1300 after taxes. Not only was is cheap, but it was easy to install. I was able to help with the installation process. My husband was doing the cutting, fitting each end piece around the walls and wood work and doorways, starting each row, and I was finishing off each row by laying full planks down. They were very simple to lay and get a tight seal. Though I won’t take too much credit for it! The first night that the floors were started, my dad was over here helping repair the floors and start laying flooring down while I was on kid duty. I helped finish the floors in the dining room, and I’ll be helping lay more in the kitchen this weekend once we get the carpet pulled up. And no, that wasn’t a typo! We have carpet in our kitchen. It HAS to go!
So if you’re looking to replace your floors soon, I definitely recommend this stuff. It’s so easy! The one we ordered was $2 per square foot, which was on the cheap end of things. They do have some that are cheaper, but I was looking for a very distinct dark floor (we went with Rosewood Ebony), and there were only so many options. All together there are tons of options though! They also sell tile look, so it would work great in a bathroom also. We’re planning to order more of this when we finish the rest of our floors. We have our bedroom upstairs (right now it’s an attic space) and we’ll probably order the same color, too. There’s another room downstairs with old carpet that needs to go also, but it wasn’t in the budget quite yet! It’s too bad we couldn’t just do them all in one go!
