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Laminate Wood Floor – no more carpet!

Yay, I’m so excited to finally start sharing the big project we have been working on since Christmas over here! If you follow me on instagram then you know I decided to rip out all the carpet in our upstairs a few days before Christmas. Charlie our new puppy was going to be coming in a few weeks and it was time to get rid of the stained old carpet.

A man standing on the floor, with Laminate Flooring

The Mr. was a huge help and we knocked out the old carpet in just a few days.

Floor and Wood

To make potty training (and my life in general) easier we decided laminate wood floor would be the way to go up here in the playroom. We have real hardwoods in our lower level and to be honest they just haven’t held up great with our kids, not to mention they were insanely expensive. We opted to go with laminate this time around because we have it in the kids rooms and it is so durable.

Now came the challenge of trying to match inexpensive laminate flooring to our crazy expensive hardwood hand scraped walnut. We wanted the laminate to run through our whole upstairs (minus the kids bedrooms since they already have white washed pine laminate in there) including our staircase so the two different floorings would be meeting at the bottom of the staircase which was a little nerve wracking.

I am so excited to partner with BuildDirect on this project – they provided me all the gorgeous flooring. BuildDirect is a such great site, because they have a gazillion different flooring options and the best part is they will ship you 5 samples for free overnight! I try to avoid taking my kiddos out home improvement shopping at all costs, so it was so nice to pick out different flooring samples right in my jammies from home and have them arrive the next day so I could compare. The new BuildDirect Home Marketplace connects you directly with the supplier keeping the cost under what you could find at your typical flooring store. I really couldn’t believe the price difference after shopping around a bit.

Their customer service is awesome too, they called me to make sure I received my samples and if I had any questions they could help me with. Once I made my decision and ordered my flooring it was all shipped right to my door.

I quickly narrowed it down to these two samples and you may be surprised, but I went with the lighter one!

Laminate wood floor sample

It’s the Lamton Laminate White Dogwood. It’s actually a bit warmer and lighter toned than our hardwoods, but I hate how every little crumb shows up on our super dark hardwoods, so I wanted something a bit lighter. It still has the hand scraped look that our hardwoods have and weirdly even though it’s quite a bit lighter it matches the floor perfect where it meets up on the stairs – here sneak peek (don’t mind the Christmas decor in the pic, or the dirty floors – which just proves my point about how every crumb shows up!)

Laminate Floor Staircase

I can’t wait to share the rest of the house now that we are finally getting everything back to normal, but here are a few real life messy shots during installation.

Floor and Wood

A room with a wooden floor

I promise pretty after pics coming soon!

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21 Comments

  1. That is a very useful post. There is a wide variation in hardwood flooring popularity as interior decorating fashions change. Floorings are available in wall-to-wall fashion or as large area rugs, is slip-resistant, and is an affordable alternative for most homeowners. Hardwood floors offer an incredible array of aesthetic options, to­o. Wood is a natural resource that is both renewable and recyclabl­e. From the kind of wood to the finish to the design of the floor pattern, hardwood floors will suit almost any taste and circumstance. One can research for more options through this page https://plus.google.com/106323115684925403520/.

  2. Those floors look great. I have shied away from laminate because I’ve always felt they felt “fake”, but it seems like the quality has come a long way in recent years. I’m going to check out BuildDirect – living in small town Wyoming, we don’t have a lot of home improvement choices.

  3. It looks great. I can’t believe how far laminate has come! I can’t wait to see more pix. I ordered a sample because I might be able to afford this better than hardwood. Thanks for the link to their website. Did you install yourself or hire someone?

  4. These are beautiful! I’ll be saving the post as I need to get rid of the carpet in my house!

  5. They are absolutely Gorgeous!! I want to put them in my living/dining room and hallway. Can’t wait to see the finished pictures!

  6. I love the color! We are in the same boat – need to replace upstairs carpet and have real hardwood downstairs. I would love to hear if you notice a difference after you have lived with them for a bit.

    1. Hey Kaitlin so they have been only been down a few weeks but we still love them! I would say I can tell a bit that they are laminate and not hardwood, but only because the texture is slightly different with the hand scraping. Although the Mr. said he wishes we would have done all laminate through the whole house now that we have it, but when we build laminate was no where near as nice as it is today. For us it was a great solution because we needed to replace 1200 sq ft of carpet and our hardwoods downstairs were $9 a sq ft yikes!

  7. Wow, great choice! I really love the color and it sure looks like hardwood to me. I also agree with you about the darker floors showing every crumb and speck of dust. Would you mind sharing the brand and color?

    1. The brand and color of the laminate? Or our hardwoods? The hardwood info is on my FAQ page and the laminate info is in the post :)

  8. Oh I love it!! We decided to do laminate floors Where we replaced the old carpet — frankly I’d switch out carpet for laminate any day of the week. I HATE wall to wall carpet. You can’t get the dust out from those pesky edges. You have to get on your hands and knees and use the attachment. Well, this old person can’t jump up and down and crawl around on her knees. And then under furniture? I hate to think about the dust bunnies.Now with wood or laminate you can get some kind of a duster and get all of grab all of those bunnies. Sorry I went on so long — I’m pretty passionate about those dust bunnies. Can’t wait to see your flooring once it’s down. Have a great day.

  9. Love that laminate is durable but I worry about the chemicals in it that can off-gas.

    What’s the safety of BuildDirect’s materials?

    1. Hi Am, I’m not sure on that you would probably have to check the different manufacturers info on that. I will say the floors just smelled like normal wood when we were laying them, no weird chemical smell at all. Thanks!

    2. Hi AM, thanks for your comment. We work diligently with our suppliers to ensure that our composite wood flooring products (such as laminate) abides by all applicable emission laws and we have a number of safeguards in place to ensure the safety and quality of our flooring products. If you have specific questions, feel free to contact us directly at 1-877-631-2845!

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