A Hiccup On Our Way To a New Kitchen Floor [SPONSORED]

My wife and I are working with Lumber Liquidators on putting a new floor in our kitchen.

While our house is relatively new - less than ten years old - we are not happy with the kitchen floor. It's white and shows dirt easily. It's vinyl and has already starting to come apart at the seams. In addition, we want to bring in a little color to our very light-colored kitchen.

As we've worked on narrowing down our floor choices (Thank you for giving us your opinion on our choices!), we've been working closely with Dustin and his team at Lumber Liquidators. They have been terrific! They've answered all our questions - no matter how silly.

Since I have no building/construction/hammering skills of any kind, we're going to use Lumber Liquidators' own installers. We have that process already rolling. Dustin gave me a pamphlet with the installer's information, and it was just a quick and easy call to set up the pre-installation appointment to review my floor, measure, and decide what materials we need. I was able to choose when I wanted the appointment, and the actual installer confirmed it all in a phone call.

When the installer arrived, he saw a potential problem right away. Our kitchen actually is accessible three ways, since our floor plan is very open in our downstairs level. You can walk into the kitchen through the dining room and through the main entry. The kitchen also "flows" into our family room, making a big "great room."

The problem, according to the installer, is that if we wanted to go with a hardwood floor (our first choice), the kitchen floor would be an inch or two higher than the other floors. He could use transition pieces from the other rooms, but the kitchen would definitely be a "small step up." (That would be weird, we thought). The other option, if we go with hardwood, would be to take out all the kitchen cabinets, remove the current sub-floor, install a new sub-floor, and go from there. That sounds like way too much work - and way too much expense. Since the house is still new, we can't see ripping everything up, and we just don't have the budget to do it all.

Our other option is to go with a laminate floor, that is thin enough that can be laid on top of our current sub-floor- and everything would be the same level. It can be laid quickly - and with a lot less installation cost. (Yay!)

So, we decided to go back to Lumber Liquidators and talk with Dustin about our options. It turns out, one of the styles of flooring we originally liked is actually a laminate - even though it looked like hardwood to me! Since it's a laminate, it cleans easily, and shows little wear and tear. (We recently found out my daughter is moving back home with us from Tennessee - and she has a dog - so, laminate may be our best choice, overall.)

Dustin explained that the floor is actually a click-vinyl, and is very easy to put down. I'm still not secure in my floor-laying-related skills, so we're still going with the installer.

Here's what we have ended up with as our choice:

After the installer's pre-visit, Darren now has paperwork specifying exactly how much flooring we need, plus other materials like transition pieces, and molding. By going with the installer, we won't be ordering more materials than we need.

At this point, Dustin is finalizing our order, and figuring out when it can all be ordered.

We're excited - and kind of happy the installation will be quick, without a major gutting of our kitchen!

Stay tuned!

This post was produced in collaboration with our advertising partner Lumber Liquidators.