Some Flooring ideas

Jason was complaining that he didn’t want the whole house to be laminate. Which I both understand and find funny…since we don’t have any laminate in the house yet! We're doing cork in the kitchen, 

and an engineered hardwood in the dining room.

The bathroom is going to have tile and the bedrooms also will be having some sort of hardwood layed in them when we get around to it (whatever we can get for a good deal from another auction). He was suggesting vinyl. Which, wasn’t really ok with me, because all I could think of was ugly, tacky, roll out “mats”. I know that there are other options, that they’ve come a long way with vinyl, because I’ve seen them use some tiles and other, better looking things on all those home improvement shows. So I went in search of those, not the ugly things that I saw in Rona, or the Depot. I came across a site for Karndean International that have a TON of vinyl tile options that are actually, well, appealing! They don’t make me want to run the other way, like those sheets waiting on the rolls in the stores.

  I was excited. They were able to allow Jason and I to compromise, he liked the durability of the vinyl, and I liked all their options and the fact that they didn’t really look like vinyl. The best part is you can order samples…FREE…and a catalogue, and you receive it within a week. I ordered a dark sample, with the living room in mind, and then just a random one. I really love the dark one, it’s exactly what I was thinking of for the living room…super dark, with subtle wood tones, it actually looks like it could be real wood. They’re a “tile”, or basically a “plank” like a piece of hardwood, which just makes them look even more like real wood.

  So I love it, I’m a convert to the dark side of vinyl! I was pumped to show Jason we can have a good looking, durable, non-laminate option for the living room. I ask him if he likes it:

Jason: “Yeah, sure.”

Me: UGH! Seriously?! Yeah sure?! “So you don’t really like it then?”

Jason: “Well, not really.”

Me: of course you don’t, because I finally like something that’s vinyl. “I think it looks really natural, it’s got the wood tones, and veins running through it, it’s pretty much exactly what I was thinking of for the living room.

Jason: “Well why does everything has to look like wood?”

Me: Huh?? “umm…well what’s it supposed to look like? Carpet? It’s vinyl…”

Jason: “I dunno, tile?”

This is where I had to stop talking, because I was afraid I would say something that would spark an argument, because now he was just being ridiculous. Tile? Seriously, who puts tile in a living room haha? We went through a house that had tile in the living room, and he made fun of it more than I did! We’ve revisited it a few times, since that initial conversation, and he’s slowly starting to come around…I just keep reminding him that the vinyl was his idea, and I like it.

  Now the conversations are leaning more towards whether we’re going to take the vinyl all the way into the entryway, or if we’re going to do tile in the entryway – like (these) penny rounds. I love pennyrounds, and like the look of them on the floor in an entry way, but because our entry is going to be more open to the living room (divided only by a short, half wall) it seems more logical to extend the vinyl all the way out. (You know, because it’s so durable that people often put it in an entryway to begin with) As much as I love and want the black pennyrounds, I think it’s a better choice to just extend the vinyl, it makes it seems more seamless, and we won’t have to have that awkward seam hump. So it looks like we’ll be going with the lovely dark vinyl from Karndean International, unless we find something similar at an auction for cheaper.