My head is going to explode. We have been looking at wood floor options for the last few months and I seriously CANNOT decide. In fact, at this point, all the choices have started running together and I can’t even remember which ones I hated yesterday.
In case you missed my implied true feelings, I do not like my carpet. But, I have endured the carpet for almost 5 years now. So, I have some advice for those of you who might be in the same boat.
1. Buy a carpet rake. I promise this makes a HUGE difference. Granted, it probably only helps if you have short shag carpet like we do, but it fluffs the carpet back up and makes it look a million times better in a jiffy.
2. Purchase a sweet rug that you LOVE. If you can’t get rid of it, camouflage it! I am a hug fan of RugsUSA rugs because when they have their sales, the prices can’t be beat. I got this rug from RugsUSA for my friend Lexee’s girls’ room. In fact, this particular rug is only $252 right now for around an 8 by 10. {No I am not sponsored by RugsUSA, and I only share info about products I love.}
3. Clean it often. Even though our carpet isn’t my favorite, it makes me feel better if it is clean. So, we try and clean our carpets at least twice a year.
4. Regularly search the internet for other flooring options. Listen to me, it is OK to dream. I give you permission. I have made a ton of “mental notes” about flooring that I like here and there. I love searching Houzz and Pinterest for cool flooring options. I also love to go to our local Parade of Homes.
5. Start a flooring fund and start saving your pennies. If you know that you are actively saving money to change the carpet “eventually” it helps. I’m speaking from experience here. Our house was a spec house and the carpet quality was poor. Although the carpet was new when we moved in, the tack strips around the edges started fraying and coming up immediately. If I would have built the house myself, I would have demanded that the carpet company come back and fix the problem. But, since our house was a bank foreclosure and the builder was out of business by the time we bought it. We were out of luck and stuck with crappy carpet.
6. Watch for flooring sales. I don’t know what type of flooring we will end up with at this point, but our new floors are getting closer and closer to a reality. So, whenever I see a big flooring sale, I pay attention because 10% off a big purchase like flooring can mean a BIG discount.
7. Visit your local Habitat for Humanity ReStore often. I have seen large amounts of flooring come into ReStore before, and depending on the size of your rooms, you may be able to replace your flooring much sooner than you thought!
I hope that a few of this tips can help you if you dislike your carpets like me. Do you have any tips for me? Do you have hardwood floors in your house? Do you love them? Hate them? I wanna know so don’t hold back!
I have very dark hardwoods that are beautiful when clean, but with 5 kids, they never look clean. Everything, and I mean everything shows. I still love wood, but would choose something lighter!
Our home has a lot of traffic every day since we have four children and our carpet was disgusting. We put in new wood floors in our dining room, living room and front entry way about 1 1/2 years ago. We went with an acai pre-engineered wood that we purchased from Lumber Liquidators during a huge sale that they run every April. It is the best money my husband and I ever spent. We love the wood floors. They are so much easier to keep clean and the wood floors have totally cut down on the amount of dust in our home. This was huge for me because I suffer from allergies and asthma. We are seriously considering putting the same wood floors in our bedroom and ripping up the carpet. It is a huge purchase so definitely look for sales. Good luck on choosing what is best for your home!
We are in the opposite boat – we hate our hardwood! It’s impossible to keep clean (it’s honey oak), things slide everywhere, and scratches randomly show up. We are so anxious to get carpet in.
Just my 2 cents! We built our house a year ago, and went with real hardwood, hand scraped. We have 4 little ones. It is HEAVEN to keep clean! You can’t see all the wear and tear on it. We’ve had scissors/drills/tools dropped all over the floors, and spill and messes everywhere. It is SO MUCH BETTER than carpet! I’m not sure the laminate stuff would hold up like this real hardwood has. The hand scraped part really hides a lot of flaws. We did our whole downstairs, including the kitchen. It’s a dream-seriously.
We went with HardwoodBargains.com for our floors. We bought during a sale, and even if they aren’t running a sale when we order some more, they still give us the sale price. They’ll send out free samples too. We got the handscraped engineered Acacia and love them!
I am with you on hating carpet. Unfortunately I rent. It is so hard to move furniture around to vacuum and a lot of living and working goes on so I’m always cleaning it. I would love to tear it out but I rent and can’t. I have friends who decided to go with a laminate flooring and hate it. It has not held up to normal wear and tear and if you have a dog you may find it showing wear a lot faster. Good luck selecting your new flooring.
I understand where you’re coming from! We recently replaced ALL the carpet upstairs (3 bedrooms, hallway, closets)with wood laminate and it’s the best decision we ever made for our house! The carpet was 15 years old and horrible. We saved our money and waited for a sale so we could afford it. We also tore out all the old carpet & installed all the quarter round trim to save money. The stairs were crazy expensive to have wood laminate installed so we painted them & used beadboard on the risers. Everything looks amazing and is so easy to clean! Here’s a link if you want to see how we finished the stairs & what the flooring looks like:
http://www.thriftydecormom.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stairs-reveal.html
http://www.thriftydecormom.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-finishing-touches-master-bedroom.html
I really disliked my carpet and when I pulled it up I hated it!! I could not believe how much dirt that carpet held, and I cleaned it at least twice a year, it was disgusting. I ripped up all the carpet and put down wood laminate, it’s beautiful for about five minutes and then everything, including footprints show. I don’t want to go back to carpet but I’m driving myself crazy trying to keep the floor clean now!! Good luck with your choice.
These are all great tips! I look forward to the day that I can get rid of our carpet! We have teal, maroon, and blue. Hideous! We have browsed different flooring options and it’s just so hard to decide! So I feel your pain! I wish I could help! Best of luck!
Hi,
What I found about any flooring change is you cannot make a good choice with small pieces of anything! You need to go see if you can get some larger ones…wood changes so much, the small sample might not look like anything once it is down….pick a good color ( don’t look at 50 choices) and pattern, knots, no knots, textured, smooth…whatever and then just go! I got caught up in this mess with painting my 20 year old interior of my house…took me 6 months to find the color and then I hated it! lol Re painted it and sold it….:):) Good luck…
I live in Australia and tiles seem to be so much more common here than in the US. We have the in our home and love them. Tiles in the living area (except for formal lounge) and carpet in the bedrooms. So easy to keep clean and they don’t scratch.
I’m right there with you. I hate the carpet in our house, especially in the living room. I want so much to tear it up, because I know there is hardwood underneath that can be refinished. The problem is, the people who owned the house before us put in wood-look linoleum in the kitchen. I just think it would look weird having real wood in the living room butting up to the wood-look linoleum in the kitchen. Although…that might make my husband want to move little more quickly on getting linoleum tore up (there’s hardwood under those too, but there are four layers that need to be removed to get to it.).
We laid hardwood in almost every room of our first floor and LOVE it! We went with handscraped so when the kids make dings you can’t tell. Another huge tip we got from a friend was DO NOT GO DARK! My friend has gorgeous dark wood floors and that was what we had always wanted. Then she had me come over. She had just cleaned her floors 4 hours prior. There was already dust/footprints/smudges all over and she has teenagers. I have 3 small kiddos so I could only imagine how much worse the cleaning nightmare would be. We went with a medium toned floor and it is perfect. You can’t see bare little footprints, dust or anything else on it. It hides all the “dirt” perfectly! I obviously clean my floors, but I don’t have time to do it twice a day and you should really only clean wood flooring once or twice a month. Make sure you use a quality underlayment too. It makes a difference with the sound. 🙂
Unless you clean every day, dark hardwood flooring is a nightmare to keep clean. I’ve lived with it for several years, and even though I love the look, it shows dirt like nothing else. Thank you for turning me to Rugs USA, I love their selection!
We just built a house and didn’t like any of the flooring options our builder provided. So we had them lay the cheap carpet (everywhere including the kitchen and bathroom) and as soon as we got the keys ripped it out. We replaced it with a hand scraped laminate by Shaw called Lumberjack Hickory in their timberline collection. I love it!! It’s a nice medium color, with a ton of texture and depth. Really easy to clean but hides dirt well. My husband found a killer deal on line and he installed aver 800 feet in 3 days. Totally recommend it!
My house has new carpets in the basement but with two cats I’ve been wanting to rip them up and put in hardwood flooring to help reduce the dust and animal hair collecting in my office space. Upstairs I have dark nearly black hardwood floors and I LOVE them as they looks so shiny and modern. I highly recommend that color to anyone.
Hey Brooke! You are awesome! Love your blog, and I have got cool ideas……..adding it to my huge folder of ideas! Also, did you make your cute rustic chandelier over your table? I love it! see ya Sunday
Some really solid tips! Carpet rakes are a must-have. Thanks for the great read!
I own a flooring store and can give you a couple of tips. Don’t go with a dark laminate or wood. They show everything. Don’t go glossy for the same reason. If you do go with wood or laminate then hand-scraped and lots of texture, color and knotholes will help to hide the dirt, footprints and scratches.
I have tile and I hate it. It’s very cold, even in the summer. The grout is filthy and ugly and too hard to clean. We do have a small entry in wood and I love the way it feels under my feet.
Have you heard of vinyl plank? They are planks just like a wood plank but made of vinyl – as in a linoleum floor. Rather than one big sheet of it there are planks. You can get cheap or expensive. If your husband is handy he can probably lay it himself. If your husband isn’t handy it is cheaper to install than wood. You don’t have to worry about getting it wet because it isn’t wood. If you do happen to get a big scratch or gouge you can remove just that piece and replace it. We have it in our shop and offices and it holds up well.
I would give you the same advice for this as I did the laminate and wood – texture, color, knotholes, no gloss. You can even get it in hand scraped. The more you pay the better it will look. I would put it in my house if my husband would rip out our tile. He won’t.
Just an idea for you!
Thank you Sherry! What great tips! xoxo, Brooke
Carpets are a paradise for dust mites and have to be removed.