mohawk – 31 Downing Street

I’m pretty sure the carpet in our house is original. Built in 1995, it is a pinky beige color, which really sets off the rest of the décor in the house… you sense my sarcasm? As much as I will miss it, NOT, we are in the throws of redoing the flooring on the entire first floor of our house and the hallway upstairs. I searched for years to decide on a flooring. I pretty sure there are a few salesmen out there still thinking they may get a sale from me, because I took SO MANY samples home. At first, I wanted to use hardwood flooring, engineered or solid, I looked at them all, but after taking home sample after sample I never found one with the right stained finish that Dean and I could agree on. I also came to the realization that hardwood was going to be more upkeep having two rambunctious boys and two dogs running around the house. I thought about how water spills happen, and I really wanted the kitchen and the family room to have the same floor so it all would blend seamlessly together, so using tile in the kitchen only was not an option. We had a yellow oak laminate in the kitchen, carpet in the living, dining, and family room, and tile in the entry and powder bath. I never thought I would go with laminate, but I did check out the luxury vinyl plank option. While doing so, I found a waterproof laminate from Mohawk that was beautiful, AND guarantees it to be waterproof with no time limit of a spill sitting on the floor. I was hesitant to believe such a claim, but after much research, it seemed to be legit, so I set off to see how it looked in real life, because screens can lie when looking at color and texture of floors. None the less, I found the Mohawk laminate flooring at a flooring store, and it was even more beautiful in real life than online. But being a deal seeker, I went online to see if I could find it cheaper. Price wise, it was almost the same online as it was in the store, but the store did not offer the special aluminum sub-profiles I needed for the stairs that lead into my kitchen and living room from the entry hallway. Dean and I both agreed that an overlapped stair nose wasn’t what we wanted, but there aren’t many options for stairs when it comes to laminate flooring. We ended up buying from FlooringMarket.com, because their pricing was great and they had the aluminum sub-profile option to make a flush stair nose. Winner! (I am not receiving any proceeds for telling you this, just friendly info.)

Now the time came to tear up all the old flooring, and we didn’t really want to be displaced in every room of our home while doing this project, so we tore up the floors area by area. The first rooms to go were the living and dining rooms. I have a picture from a couple years back of my living room with the carpet.

This room never looked terrible with the carpet per say, but it always lacked that finished look. Here are pics of the living and dining room bare and ready for the flooring to go in: