I'm Totally Floored!

Actually, I wish I was totally floored; right now I'm just a bit torn up. I'm talking about the floor in my kitchen, hallway and living room. We've needed to replace the rugs and linoleum for quite a while and today the process of removing the old stuff began.

After much discussion and price checking we decided to put down a laminate wood floor. Just this morning we chickened out. Once we calculated the cost of covering the 500 square feet we needed to cover (about $1900) we checked out other options.

Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that we'd have to cover such a large expanse of space at one time. Our solution is functional, decorative and much more economical. We've decided to put down self stick 18" x 18" tile through the hallway and kitchen. They have a lifetime warranty, the larger size will make the job move along quickly and, even though we'll have to put down a layer of thin plywood over then whole floor first, the cost is about 1/4 of what we were going to spend. Also if the dog decides to dig a hole in one of the tiles, as he did with the sheet of linoleum that had been in my kitchen, I can easily replace it.

We're going to leave the living room for after the holidays. We might put down carpet. We might put down a wood patterned self stick tile. We may even decide to put down the laminate wood flooring in there after all. No matter what we choose, I feel relief knowing that the price tag won't be as high and I won't have to pay it all at once.