Floors!

The floors. Aaaah. These bad boys had me stressed out to the max. I mean, picking out a style of flooring is by no means on the same plane as say, saving a life, or world peace or something. I get that. But man...this was one of those big time decisions that would make my heart start palpitating irregularly when I thought about it. I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted something that was kinda dark, not too dark and a little bit farmhouse-y worn looking. I hate the look of some of those hand-scraped styles that appear like someone took their finger nails and dug 5 trenches down the plank. I guess you could say, I knew more what I didn't want. :) But maybe something like this would be nice:


I was really hoping we could get real wood and not laminate. The rumor that laminate echoes had me worried since we were doing SO much space. The house is 2650 square feet and we are covering all but about 50 square feet of that in this wood. You can see why it was such a big decision! To buy ALL of that wood and have it installed is gonna be big bucks and what if I don't like it??? Yikes. I can't think about it. I'll start to sweat.
On St. Patty's Day my parents came up so we could go pick it out. We went to Floor Trader first and found two that we really liked. They were SIX DOLLARS A SQUARE FOOT. That didn't even count the glue or the installation. Yowza. Now Brad was the one that was sweating. :) He kept saying, "let's just take a look at the laminates...just to see." That's his way of saying, "Heck no. We can't afford that. Try again!" 
Next we went to Lumbar Liquidators, had a great sales gal and within minutes had picked out a manufactured wood floor that we loved. The best part was it was 1/2 the price. Only $3 a square foot which was cheaper than most of the laminates at the first place! 
Here's a pic of the 3 finalists...

We picked the one on the far right.

I love it so much. We took it to the house last week-end to see it in there and it made me love it even more!

The hardest part is that the flooring is one of the last things to go in so I'm gonna have to wait SO long to see it, but I know it will be worth it!

First decision MADE! Yes!