We had already decided on flooring, as the carpets were in a deplorable condition. We went for the Strand Bamboo - Natural from simplefloors (see http://www.simplefloors.com/) We were hoping for hardwood but we have a concrete subfloor and didn't want to meddle with either adding a plywood subfloor or having to use engineered hardwoods. Nothing against them, but a solid material seems more fitting for a household full of children who sooner than later will deeply scratch a natural floor.
The bamboo samples we had checked out scratched very easily. The alternative was to recover them with a nice urethane coat to make them more durable.. that is until we discovered the strand bamboo varieties. Strand bamboo seems to be a one piece of material kind of plank but it's made by pressure compacting of bamboo and glues. The result? an amazingly hard surface! Much harder than any of the hardwoods we would have been able to afford.
Bamboo floors and supplies: approx. $3500/860 ft2
We will be floating these floors, gluing them to each other and allowing an empty space at the edges of the rooms for natural contraction and expansion.
The floors are sitting in our dining room and living room, but we'll be taking about 1/4 ton of floors upstairs to do a test run with the master bedroom. A great think about doing it yourself is that you can allow room for mistakes, considering the price of installers! Plus, at the end of the day (or week, or month.. or dare I say year) you'll know how to do it!
So flooring, underlayment and glue, together with craigslist-acquired table saw and miter saw just waiting for us to get to them... looking forward walking barefoot in our new floors!
No comments:
Post a Comment