It’s Done!
Ahhh – it feels so nice to finally be rid of all of our carpet downstairs.
(Please excuse the baby paraphernalia. I live in a house with a 6-month old, so it’s inevitable. My house definitely does not look like a magazine with no baby toys floating around, so there’s no reason to pretend it does!)
We’ve been talking about doing this for forever and we finally got around to it a few weeks ago – for those of you who missed it when we did Jackson’s room or the dining room, we’re slowly going through the process of replacing the flooring throughout our house with this “luxury vinyl” flooring from Lowe’s. It looks surprisingly like actual hardwood but is really peel and stick vinyl. It’s incredibly affordable and easy to install, and it’s super durable (which is vital when you have three dogs and a 6-month old!)
We also switched up a few other things around the living room while we were at it. Hadley was not a fan of the new flooring (it’s slippery and she still has to learn how to walk on it) and so for the first few days after we installed it she hid upstairs all day long so she didn’t have to step on it. We finally decided to bring in the big rug from the garage as a temporary measure to make her happy and to make the floor a little softer for Jackson. Turns out, though, we love how it looks in here and it’ll probably stay for the foreseeable future. It’s super sort and feels good underfoot, and it’s a really easy to clean rug so it’s great for a high traffic area like the living room.
We also switched out some pillows and got a fiddle leaf fig (I’m determined not to kill this one!). We don’t love the ottoman in here now with the new rug…it feels a bit too formal and out of place, but we haven’t decided what we’ll do about that yet. The options are to get a different rug (which we aren’t sure about, since we really like this one) or replace the ottoman (which makes us sad, since we really like it and haven’t had it for that long). We’ll see where we land, but for now we’re just happy it’s looking so much better in here!
It makes me so happy to see consistent flooring again from one side of the house to the other – dealing with that carpet transition for the last few months hasn’t been fun…the house feels so much more cohesive, and it immediately felt so much cleaner!
We still want to bring this flooring into the kitchen, but that’ll be last on our list – we want to finish all of the upstairs first. The next step for now is to re-install baseboards in both of these rooms and to fix the fireplace – Corey accidentally knocked off one of the tiles on the wall when we were working on the flooring. We had already been planning on doing something to update the fireplace, anyways, it’s just a little higher on our priority list now!
Whew, it feels good to be done with this! Now we just need to take a breather for a few weeks and then muster up the energy to tackle the baseboards – it’s never a fun project, but it makes such a big difference in how finished the room looks!
What have you been working on in your home lately?
Did you use the 48 in. planks? I noticed that now it is only available in 36 in . planks. Someone commented on the Lowe’s site that they have changed the product. Supposedly, the planks are thinner and less sticky than they were before. have you bought any of this flooring recently and have you noticed a difference?
We did use it recently (last summer) in our bedroom. We definitely noticed that it seemed to be less sticky. However, they do recommend using a primer to help stick (which we hadn’t done before), so the next time we use it we’ll do that. I believe the planks we used were 36″.
The floors are amazing!! How have they held up since the last comment back in 2014? We have a concrete slab for our house and thank you we are going to start the same floors antique woodland oak! We talked to Lowe’s and said use a primer (to stick better) on the floors. Did you use the primer or did you just do the peel and stick? So excited!!
We LOVE them! I actually have a post coming up in a couple of weeks with an update on how they’re doing. I can’t recommend them enough. We did not add any sort of primer – just trusted the peel & stick system! The one thing I’d recommend is to make sure your floors are clean before starting! You cannot spend too much time on the prep work for this project!
How is the vinyl holding up? I recently purchased a house that needs a lot of work and was thinking of this for the kitchen, a high traffic area. Let me know!
So far, it’s great! We haven’t had any issues whatsoever – we still love it and are still planning on continuing it into the kitchen eventually!
Great job!!!! The look of wood always makes things look so much prettier.
Cheers for the magnificent work you did! I love the grayish wall paint, it looks so classy and dramatic. Your ceiling fan is simply gorgeous and those colorful pillows are fantastic. Suits your living room very well. Keep it up!
Your home looks so good!! I love how it’s stylish and wonderfully decorated however it still looks cozy and homey. Some places can look artsy but you could never imagine living in them. Nicely done:).
Wow! This looks pretty amazing. I like that you guys picked dark wood floors, very few people do that and it looks really good and it might even be better covering scratches long term.
Thanks!
Love it. Turned out great.
Your place is looking great! I would keep the ottoman but change the legs to something less formal. Maybe that will help?
I love the way this came out! Did you have to do any floor prep? I’m assuming that you just had a concrete slab under your carpet, or did you have subfloor boards? Also, where did you find such a tall fiddle-leaf fig!?!?
When we had the pneumatic hammer we used the floor scraper to clear up some spots on the concrete subfloor, but other than that it was just cleaning! When we did the dining room we had a few spaces we had to patch, but in this room the concrete was in good shape.
The fig is from Home Depot – only $25!
The new floors look gorgeous guys! Your first floor looks great with the change. From here you definitely can’t tell those aren’t real wood floors.