~$1000 for new floor, ouch

Just bought 1K of new flooring for our frontroom, hallway and maybe the small bathroom depending on how things go. jeeze, flooring is expensive. but getting rid of this horrid carpet (and all the allergens in it) will be worth it.

we went with wood finish laminate, just the cheapest option we could find that we liked the look of really. I wanted to go with something more eco friendly, but it just wasn't working out pocketbook wise, and i wanted to get at least some of the carpet out before winter set in and mold went through the roof (literally) My son and I both have asthma and carpet is just a bad word to me because of it ;-p

i'm going to put it in myself. I helped a couple friends put in the same sort of floating laminate a few years ago and another friends mom put in some last year, so i'm not to worried about it, it's pretty easy and every place charges around $2-$3 a sq ft to install, just not worth it to me, lol. that's more then we ended up paying a sq ft for the laminante itself, lol.

I really wanted bamboo, but the bamboo in our budget isn't much more enviromentally friendly then this, and costs at least twice as much, on online clearance not including shipping. so we opted for the cheaper option. I feel kinda bad, but then $1000 usn't anything to sneeze at, so I just have to remind myself that we can only do what's within our means. oh well... ~sigh~

On the bright side this is our last major purchase for our house for a while (still thinking about replacing the dishwasher, though, not sure- maybe find a second hand one) it's nice to be so close to done with everything and that much closer to being ready to just live in the house with no big projects to complete before it's really home. YEAH!!!

Congratulations on the big upgrade, I'm sure they will look great and your body will appreciate the relief from the carpeting.

Because I've been such a city guy for so long (San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, back to SF) I've never been more than a renter and in very small places at that. I'm really looking forward to buying someday and DIYing it up.

Good luck, sorry I'm not closer to put in a few hours of labor

Congrats on the new flooring! 

I like Deej have only ever rented, so I don't have much experience in taking care of a home (although my brother just bought a place so I've been hearing a bit about it from him).  But I'm sure you and your son will feel the difference with the new flooring.  It's kind of amazing how much stuff gets trapped in carpet...

What kind of bamboo were you looking at?  Always good to be aware of other folks' experiences...and to remember that not all bamboo is cream of the crop.

A year or two ago we put in partial-bamboo floors from Ikea.  I forget exactly what the type is called, but the top layer is bamboo.  Ikea called it 'Kvist', and as I recall it was around $3/sq ft.  Nice looking stuff.  We put it in our front room and adjacent hallway, which was somewhere close to 300 sq ft, so probably cost nearly the same as your project. 

We installed it ourselves too.  Ikea has a nice system where you just put a pad down, and then the slats interlock so you don't need any adhesives or anything.  Pretty simple to install, except when we got toward the end next to the walls it was very difficult.  The whole thing ended up taking 3 days.  The first day (Saturday) my wife had to work, so I pulled up the carpet and linoleum underneath it and cleaned the floor.  Then we put most of the floor down on the Sunday, and finished it up on the Monday.

It's held up pretty well.  There are a few scratches where we took too long to put pads on the feet of our sofa, and one of our dogs tends to drag furniture around when we're not home.  Other than that, it still looks really good.  I don't know about the amount of time they let the bamboo grow before harvesting or formaldehyde or anything like that, but Ikea is a relatively very environmentally conscious company, so hopefully they took all that into consideration.