We didn’t do everything right when we built The Little House, but I love the things we did do right.
One of those things was to skip the carpeting and instead, we installed laminate flooring that looks like wood.
I put a lot of thought into the flooring because I hate carpet – and here’s why – we have dogs.
Dogs and carpet don’t mix. I would like to say I was the genius who came up with the plan to forego the carpet, but my aunt moved here before we did and was actually the brains behind the plan.
She’s been here since 1999 and her high-quality, laminate flooring still looks almost as good today as it did then, and she has several big dogs running around with their nails.
As well, carpet is just not good here in the country, where the clay is red and seed ticks dwell (seed ticks are tiny little baby ticks that are worse than their grown counterparts and can burrow in carpet).
When we pulled the carpet up to replace it so we could sell our house in the city, I was doubly glad I would never have to deal with carpet again. Even when you keep it clean, the dirt and dust (and I suppose mites) that congregates under the carpet and padding is one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen!
As with most people I know, our primary consideration had to be with cost when building The Little House. Our next consideration was the convenience of cleaning/maintaining a floor with the dogs.
When taking both cost and convenience into consideration, hardwood was automatically ruled out.
While I would have liked to have gone with bamboo, as it is the most environmentally friendly flooring, cost also eliminated that choice as well.
We were left with laminate and I’m very happy with it. In The Little House, we went with a light oak, as the décor is more cabin-based. In The Belle Writer’s Studio, I went with a darker wide wood plank, as the décor there is what I like to consider more “19th century country law office.”
If you’re going to choose a laminate flooring, here’s some tips that made things easy for us:
- In The Little House, we went online and chose a high-quality laminate as the prices were cheaper then the stores, even with shipping. We had the company ship us samples first to make sure it was what we were looking for.
- For both buildings, we chose an easy snap together flooring that uses no glue.
- We haven’t found it to be true that you can’t use laminate in the bathroom due to the risk of water. I suppose it might not be a good idea if it were to get wet all of the time (if you have kids, for example), but we’ve even had an incident where my husband left the shower curtain out and the floor didn’t buckle. Of course, we soaked up as much as we could and put fans on the floor to dry it as quickly as possible.
- We weren’t here for much of the building process on The Little House, so we hired a flooring company to install it for us. BIG waste of money. The snap together flooring is easy and can be done in a small house in a matter of hours. Just make sure you follow the directions. If you have a helper, my husband says it’s easier!
- The one thing I would have done differently was to go with the next higher grade. We went with a medium priced, medium quality floor and we’ve found when things hit it just right, it will dent and even chip.
Guest Post by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell for the Tiny House Blog
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