What about floor?

The traditional way of putting in carpet around the house seemed to have gone out of fashion by the time we looked at floor covering. Having decided and completed the jobs on ceramic tiles for kitchen, baths, and entry, it's time to worry about the floor for the rest of the house.

Believe or not we still had the Gray-Green carpet from who-knows-when in the 2 front bedrooms. And the carpet in living room, dining area, and family room was from 1983, when we first moved in. Only the master bedroom had new carpet from 1990. Daddy took all of them out in some late nights, all by himself, and came home dusty all over and worn out completely.

The family room and the master bedroom each had a small area of concrete floor, that came from additions in the 70's, we believe. That fact alone ruled out (solid 3/4-in) hardwood floor for those 2 rooms, because hardwood floor can only be nailed to plywood, which will make the floor in that area 3/4-in higher than the rest of the room. We ended up choosing laminate-wood floor mainly for its scratch resistant and moisture resistant characteristics, against engineered-wood (hardwood layer on top with plywood layers below). The fact that it's low cost, esp. the below $1/sq-ft ones, and it's easy to install (just floating on top of a layer of foam) didn't make the decision any harder.

Daddy did the family room install (about 300 sq-ft) and left the rest of the house (about 950 sq-ft, and 350-ft of new baseboard mouldings) to our tile man. Now we have wood floor throughout the house. Oh, BTW, he did try to clean the carpet glue from the old hardwood floor in Living Room, Family Room, and Hallway, but failed rather miserably, for the wood was permanently stained by the glue and the old floor was only 3/8-in thick.