{floored}

When we bought our house {almost two years ago now!} I was bummed about the flooring. Our old house had hardwoods that were in great shape, and our kitchen had a brand new wood parquet floor.

The new house...well...had old unfinished hardwoods in the front room and two of the bedrooms. And yucky carpet in the kitchen and family room. The entryway had old, stained linoleum.

You could say it was a flooring disaster of epic proportions.

And I never thought we would be able to afford to replace all of that flooring so quickly, but we did. And on a tight budget! I thought I would share our flooring journey to give some inspiration to others who are on a similar budget.

So let's take a look at the before and after shots, shall we?

The entryway went from this...

To this...

Much more welcoming, right? And at 99 cents per square foot, the laminate we used was very easy on the budget.

We put the same laminate in the kitchen/family room to replace the yucky - and yes, I have to say yucky again - carpet.

Here are some super before shots from the inspection day...

Oh yes, friends, the toe-kick is carpeted too. For optimum comfort.

And yes, the area in front of the door was tiled but not the kitchen. Genius.

And here is the after, although this ginormous room is still a major work in progress {I'm still hoping that Genevieve will knock on my door one day soon with a brand new kitchen}...

Love the random toys and laptop on the floor. I like to keep it real friends.

The flooring in these two spaces cost us around $1200 and that was for installation as well. Considering that was a total of around 600 square feet, it was a great deal and a good low budget solution for such a large space.

Next up is our front room which we currently use for our dining room and office/crafting area. This space had original hardwoods but they were in terrible shape.

Here is the best worst before shot I could find. It really shows the lack of finish and stains that were on the floors. Of course the cute two year old distracts your eyes just a tad...

And here is a a photo from inspection day...

And here is the after...

And for a comparison...the old and new finish...

Now that they are refinished I can't believe we lived with them for over a year. But you do what you gotta do, right?

This project cost a total of $600 because we used a local independent contractor who was able to keep the cost down for us. We also live in a low cost of living area, so I'm sure that helps us out as well.

And finally, just last week we had carpet installed in our bedroom and Landon's room. {Ben's room already had a nice shag carpet so we left his alone.}

The hardwoods in these rooms were in the same shape as our front room, and since they are bedrooms we opted for cozy carpet instead of refinishing the wood.

And boy does it really cozy up those spaces...

Disclaimer: **Ignore the random toes in this shot, and the fact that our bed is sitting on the floor. The boys love jumping on it that way so who knows how long it will take us to put it back on the frame. Plus it kind of takes me back to our just got our first place and can't afford a bed days, and that makes me smile. **

Here is Landon's carpet...

And the transition from the newly finished hardwoods in the hall to the carpet...

Call me a dork but this shot really makes me smile.

We hired Lowe's for this job, because they had a great deal on the carpet {94 cents per square foot!} and we were able to finance the project into easy payments. Including installation this project came to a total of $550. Not bad for two cozy new bedrooms!

So are you still with me?

I hope I haven't bored you with my adventures in flooring, but I'm super excited that we finally have good quality flooring in our entire house. And for less than $3,000, we were able to get over 1500 square feet of brand spanking new/re-finished floors.

I hope this gives my fellow small budget decorators some hope!