Help me get wood floors, please!

[DKinTX]

So, I have really shabby carpets. We moved in five years ago, and the carpet was in good shape but not new. Now it's just yucky. Granted, we've never had it professionally cleaned. No, not once in five years. It's actually not awful because we take off our shoes and don't allow eating in carpeted areas, but it's just dingy and the cats have torn out big chunks of it in all our doorways. We have two cats and a dog (sheds a lot) and I just don't like carpeting.

 

Anyway, Lord willing, my husband will be getting a bonus in a couple of weeks. I know he thinks we can't afford wood flooring, but it would be my dream come true if we could get it in at least part of the house. Our downstairs area is about 2000 sq.ft. We have a carpeted bonus room upstairs but that can stay carpeted; it looks fine. Anyway, I wouldn't even care about the bedrooms being wood, just the main living room and hallway. So I'm thinking like 1000 sq.ft of wood flooring sounds about right (I know I need to measure and everything).

 

So, how much do you think this will cost? I'm just asking from your personal experience. I know I need to call places, look online, etc. It doesn't have to be real wood, I'm fine with laminate or bamboo or whatever is cheaper but still nice and durable. I'm thinking if I can keep it to $3k or less I might talk my dh into it. Do you think that price is possible? Thoughts? Also, I know it's cheaper to install it ourselves, but that's not really an optin. DH isn't handy and I don't know if our marriage could survive such an undertaking. ;-) Thanks so much for reading my rambling questions!

[MotherMayI]

I sent you a pm!

[Perry]

We replaced our carpets with wood last fall. I *LOVE* my wood floors.

 

Ours were about $7.50 a square foot, plus $1500 for the stairway and a few hundred more for trim work and "lacing in" to the existing kitchen wood floor. We had about 1500 square feet plus the stairway. Total cost was about $12,000. It took 3 weeks for the upstairs and downstairs, but the stairway and trim work took forever as it had to be custom made and the guy didn't allow enough time, causing it to drag on and on. I think it was 9 weeks from beginning to end.

 

We could have got it a little cheaper by going to a big box store, but we really wanted to support the local business. He had done the floors in our old house and we knew he would do an excellent job.

 

I don't think you are going to be able to have a wood floor installed for $3.00 per square foot. That probably doesn't even cover the cost of the wood. I don't know how much laminate costs.

 

In the long run, wood is probably more economical than carpet, since you will never have to replace it. But the up front cost is going to be more than carpet.

 

Good luck!

[Chris in VA]

Can you install it yourself?

Home Depot has wood for about $3-4 a sq ft., but I think that's uninstalled.

 

Could you do tile in the hall (is it an entry?) and then wood in the main room? Going somewhere like Habitat For Humanity's Re-Store may yield tile for cheap prices.

[DragonflyAcademy]

Do you have any independent wood floors stores near you? I'd look there too.. they can sometimes be as competitive price wise as the big box stores.

 

I would never get flooring again from a big box store like Home Depot etc.. we did that once and it was truly a disaster..

[TrixieB]

Dh priced prefinished hardwood locally. The quotes he got were around $10/SF including installation. Stairs were $60/stair; I think this was the installation cost, in addition to the materials, but I'm not sure.

 

A friend's dh got bamboo flooring from a clearance center type place and installed it himself. My friend said the bamboo cost $2/SF, but her dh did a bunch of research first to make sure he was getting the quality of bamboo he wanted. Apparently there are different grades. Oh, and her dh said it was more cost-effective to buy the installation tools (floor nailer, compresser, etc.) than to rent them.

 

My dh wanted bamboo but we got an incredible deal on hardwood so ended up going with that. We're very happy with our floor.

[MamaT]

We replaced our floors with bamboo this summer. When we went to price the flooring, we were looking at hardwood, laminate, etc. just to see what we could afford. What we found was that the bulk of the price was in the installation costs. We have a friend who does it for a living, so he basically loaned us his tools, came in did the hard parts, and showed us how to do the rest ourselves. He charged us an hourly rate for his time (which was a measly amount). Otherwise, I don't know that we could have afforded to do it.

 

One thing that was surprising to me was that the bamboo on sale was almost as inexpensive as the laminate. The laminate would have cost much less to install though.

[DawnM]

We replaced our large master bedroom and the living room with hardwood floors.

 

We did NOT want engineered hardwood, we wanted solid hardwood.

 

DH installed it himself and we found Bruce solid hardwood at I think Home Depot for $3/sq. ft. We were told it would have been an additional $3/sq. ft. for installation.

 

On top of that cost we did need to purchase the stuff that goes under the hardwood and we had a nailgun from our previous house renovations.

 

Dawn

[northcoast]

We have the maple hardwood flooring from them that we installed ourselves and we love it! When measuring you need to add about 10-15% to your square footage for waste/matching, etc. You also need to budget for underlayment paper.

 

You could try Craigslist and Habitat Restore. It may be difficult to find 1000 sq ft of the same thing there unless you are willing to be patient waiting for the right thing to come along. But you never know. It's worth checking.

 

Good luck!

[dani3boys]

We are thinking of buying the bamboo flooring at Home Depot. It's currently $1.99 per square foot.

[cin]

We have laminate in the basement, and after about 4 years, it is looking really bad. The place where my desk is, and my chair rolls is showing wear. And we can't refinish it.

 

DH put hardwood in our kitchen 15 years ago (about) and it still looks great. It was unfinished and he finished it also. It is BRUCE brand, and it still looks fabulous. We are looking to get hardwood for the rest of the first floor, and he is insistent on BRUCE, REAL hardwood. No laminte. We did put bamboo in our oldest dd room (She's from Asia, so the bamboo was a great fit ;) ). It is holding up well, but it is a bedroom and doesn't get a ton of wear. But again, it is REAL wood, not laminate. We (I) are considering putting bamboo in the other bedrooms when it comes time to replace the flooring. Of course, DH does all the labor, which makes if much more affordable. It takes longer, but honestly, if he didn't have projects like that, I think he'd go nuts.

[ChristusG]

We just had wood laminate installed last week. We got it in the living room, family room, kitchen, hallway, and foyer....which is about 1000 sq ft. We paid about $5,500, plus a bit extra for quarter round and such. That is installed by professionals since my husband is not the least bit handy LOL.

 

Hardwood flooring just would not work for us. Our kids play hard, drop things, etc. We have two dogs with nails. So many people that I spoke with said that real hard wood scratches VERY easily.

[DKinTX]

Thanks so much to everyone who replied. I'm taking all your info into consideration and sharing it with my dh. I'm really hoping he gets on board with the plan. If he does, you'll hear about it here because I won't be able to contain my excitement!

Thanks again!!

[Laura Corin]

We had bamboo for four years before we sold the flat. It wore well: the only damage was from pushing a heavy box across the floor which turned out to have rusty staples in the bottom.

 

Laura

[KatieJ]

We put laminate in our kitchen, dining and hallways just over 2 years ago. We went with a local discount flooring store.(It is a discount outlet for a huge decorating store in our area.....they carry the same stuff in a warehouse setting.) We got a very high quality one, not the one they keep in stock. It shows no wear after 2 years.

It didn't cost that much to buy but the labor is quite significant to install it. My husband can do most anything, but back issues made us decide to hire someone to install it.

 

The bedrooms in our 40 year old house have hard wood floors that need to be refinished. :glare: However, they have held up well. I am not sure I would want that in my kitchen tho.