New engineered flooring!
It’s going to sound crazy, but the first thing we purchased for the new house before even moving in were the floors. Because there were about 8 different floors in the home, we knew that they needed to be replaced to get the look we love, and it needed to be before we’ve moved everything in or else it would take us forever to get them done.
Well, they’re still taking forever to get them done. Floors are no joke. When you’re a husband and wife DIYing your floors and you’re also parents, it’s going to take time. At least one person should be checking on the kids as often as possible while keeping them out of the way and safely distracted. This means that installing the floors is usually a one person job. Which takes foooooorrrrreeeeevvvvvvveeeeeeeerrrrrrr.
But they’re gorgeous and well worth the wait. And like I mentioned in my first post, we’re having some fun “camping” in the living room, sleeping on our mattress on the floor, while we install the new floors on the entire 2nd floor. Plus we’re painting as well!
So here are the details of the absolutely amazing deal on our absolutely amazing floors. We were seriously considering making our own plywood floors. I know it sounds a little crazy, but you should search Pinterest for plywood floors to see what people are doing with them. Simply beautiful results and it’s all about how you finish them. But one day I was searching Craigslist for flooring leads just because I was thinking about the amount of work it would have been to finish those plywood floors properly, and a listing from Ted at ReallyCheapFloors.com pops up. I research them, look at their BBB review, check out their Facebook page and then finally decide to look at their stock.
ReallyCheapFloors.com truly sell really cheap floors. Basically, a company like Shaw Floors will sell their factory seconds to ReallyCheapFloors and they turn around and sell them at a ridiculously reduced rate to consumers. What are factory seconds? Factory seconds are the pieces that don’t make the inspection to be sold as full price by Shaw and their dealers. There are various “defects” that will cause the piece to be deemed insufficient for first quality floors, but when you actually see these floors it won’t be as obvious as you might think.
Our defect was listed as color. So if the color is even slightly off from the inspector’s control piece, that piece is now a factory second. Our floors are Shaw’s Jubilee 5 in the color Barnwood, from their Epic Expressions engineered wood floors line. They’re hickory which is very hard and supposed to be very durable. These floors retail for about $4-$5/square foot. We got ours for $1.19/square foot. Yes, you read that right, $1.19/square foot! They were actually listed for $1.29/square foot but Ted said he would reduce it to $1.19 if we purchased 3,000 square feet instead of 2,700. The freight to have it shipped directly to our home was completely reasonable at just over $400, adding about $0.14/square foot to the cost for a total of $1.33/square foot. Plus, no sales tax!
There was also the underlayment to buy and we ended up purchasing a specific manual floor nailer (always read the flooring manufacturer’s recommendation for installation), refurbished from the manufacturer – PowerNail, for only $100! Plus the specific nails, we spent under $4,400 for 3,000 square feet of gorgeous, durable flooring.
ReallyCheapFloors.com kept the whole lot for us in their warehouse until we moved into our home, then had them delivered in less than a week. Every single person I spoke to there was extremely helpful and polite before, during, and after our purchase. If you are looking into new floors, check them out!
Nicole K.
Originally posted on Techmomogy @ Home
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