Flooring Shopping Spectactular

As I mentioned last week, I've been torn about what to do for flooring in the main living/dining/kitchen area. When I first looked at the house, I immediately wanted to do it in a terra-cotta look porcelein tile. After thinking more about the cost involved with installing 600+ square feet of tile, I reconsidered.

The old subfloors are solid, but would need a concrete board backing on top if we were going to put down tile. Laying, screwing down, and taping the concrete board would be labor intensive and have little room for error. Actually laying tile is the same only more so. Mr. Nola is good at detail work, but I'm more of a slap-a-coat-of-paint-on-and-forget-it sort of girl. Given the work load we've got going, self-install on tile was just not going to work. Flooring contractors quoted me around $7.50 sq ft installed price, plus the cost of installing the concrete board, for the cheapest tile they had. $5K+? Not worth it.

So I've been shopping laminates, with the thought that even if they aren't as durable, for the difference in cost I can replace it in 5-10 years and still come out ahead. Plus, floating laminates are a simple enough installation we could do it ourselves and not have to mess with the cost and hassle of lining up installers. Generally I'm a wood floor snob, and don't believe in fake wood. But as my mantra on this house goes: its-a-rental. Plus, it was built in the 50's, when if they had had laminates, they would surely have used them. It's my time-travel theory of architectural authenticity .

So how psyched am I to have found this laminate floor at Lumber Liquidators for $.59 a square foot? It's marked down because it has a slight bevel on the edge that makes the planks look more like real wood, IMO. It's an 8 mm laminate with 3 mm of foam backing already on it, so it's reasonably good quality. Honestly, it looks about as good as any other laminate I've seen, and did I mention it's $.59 a square foot? The entire project will cost less than $500! For that price, it could have jagged glass coming out of the edges for all I care.