A Less Expensive Flooring Option

I think a little while back I told you that we were done with home improvement projects for awhile. That was funny.  I meant it at the time but...

You all know there's going to be a back-story here, right?  Am I ever able to just post something without one?  Well, in true back-story form, let me try to explain why I think I find it so important to provide back-stories.  When I had a job outside the home, I worked as a clinical social worker at at psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents.  One of my responsibilities was to write a comprehensive social history on each child on my caseload to present to the rest of the patient's treatment team.  It was the child's back-story.  It started with their mother's pregnancy, included early development, their health, school history, family history, history of abuse, behavioral problems, living situations, history of treatment, medications, etc.  All these pieces mattered in that they would help the psychiatrist, psychologist, nurses and behavioral staff better understand, relate to and treat the child.

While I'm not working there anymore, I find that this mentality of helping people understand through back-stories is how I communicate...and evidently how I write.  So, while some of you may roll your eyes and think, "Oh, Jane, just get to the point!" back-stories are my way of attempting to communicate to you lovelies in a more meaningful way. So now, back to the back-story.

When we bought our house, the play room (a room right off the mudroom) had just been re-carpeted. It was a nice, flecked berber and it served us well.  But over the last 10 years, it's gotten a lot of wear and absorbed a lot of dirt and grime.  Oh, and there was that one time that one of the kids pulled down the floor lamp and the halogen bulb shattered and melted into the carpet so that sections of the carpet were given a hair-cut of sorts to cut out the burnt spots. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

 See the clean spot where the love seat usually sits under the map?

When we moved the love seat to clean underneath, we were reminded of the beating the carpet was taking by the stark line showing both what the carpet looked like initially and how much grime it was hanging onto.  Several times, we rented a carpet shampooer.  While the water it sucked out looked like it was cleaning it well, it never made the difference we were hoping for.  And, with young children in and out of our home, I want to provide a clean floor for them to crawl around and play on.  But we made do and I vacuumed.  Like, all the time.

Then, we got a dog.

A dog who, ironically, wipes his feet in the grass after he pees, but does not wipe his feet when he comes into the house.  Instead, he comes bounding in, through the (now a) school room, tracking in dirt (especially on wet days).

We had often wondered if there was some hardwood flooring underneath that carpet.  Well.  A couple weeks ago, Jamey pulled up a corner and discovered that even if there is nice wood flooring underneath, it was covered by 3/4-inch sub floor nailed down with about 1,000 nails which would be a larger project than what we were looking for.

When we first moved in, we redid the floor in our laundry room with peel and stick tile-looking vinyl squares.  It has held up very nicely.  Well, they even make peel and stick wood-looking vinyl "boards".  There was a style on sale that we liked which had gotten very good reviews.  We decided to give it a try.

The carpet was torn out and the carpet tacking strips were pried up with some help from our girls. Because the sub floor was old, some of it came up with the strips, so Jamey had to use wood filler to patch around the edge of the room to make a flat, smooth surface.

What is a sub floor to children?  A giant canvas to draw on!  So while we awaited for our order to come in, the kids (and their friends) went to town.

Whoever plies up this flooring one day is in for a real treat.

A latex primer was applied to help the vinyl "boards" adhere better.  Once dry, it was a peel, stick, and roll process that came together in about six hours (not including adding quarter-round to the trim and painting it).

While at Lowe's we purchased the hanging floor model of a discontinued area rug which was on sale.  This would add a little warmth to the room and soft place to sit (or lay, if you're a Turkey).

While it's not real hardwood, we are pretty pleased with how it turned out.  The cost? $150 for the "wood" flooring (it would have been at least three times this amount for real wood and the labor would have been much more extensive) and $88 for the area rug.  Now we have a floor that will be easier to clean/maintain AND when large groups come to our house for meals, we can roll up the area rug, throw a table cloth on the school table and we'll have a second dining room.

NOW.  We're done.  Believe me? ;-) Pin It