Beware Of The Prices

Well let me start by saying that today is Friday for me, yeap once again I will be out Thursday and Friday as I'm trying to finish my vacation time. Isn't it sad when you have days off and don't know what to do with them? Unfortunately our policy is use it, or lose it, so I will just go home and stay in bed or something.

Last week we finished installing the laminate floor, boy that was a big job but it was worth the effort and in the end we saved about $15,000.00. Sounds hard to believe? See when we first started contemplating on replacing the carpet that we had we called one of those companies that "specialize" in installing floors and the first estimate came up to $18,000.00. We pretended to be interested and told the representative that we needed to talk (my wife and I) and when we had a decision we would call them... Not!

Mi chica decided to give someone else a try and so again they came in and after measuring the house they gave us their estimate, keep in mind this estimates were for laminate floors not real wood floors. So after it was all said and done they told us that it would be around $11,000.00. I looked at my wife and she looked at me and again we told the guy we needed to talk and make a decision and that we would let them know.

One day mi chica and I had to go to Home Depot to buy some stuff we needed and while there we decided to check the prices for the floors. Well guess what, we told them how much we may need and after they did the math they told us it would be about $3000.00 and that if we wanted it installed they had their sub-contractors and they estimated another $3000.00 for the labor. Well now, that is a huge difference from $18,000.00 isn't it? So now we are excited, this is more realistic and more within our means.

We were ready to take the plunge and just a day before we were going to go and buy all the flooring our Costco coupon booklet comes in the mail and as we go through it what do we see in there? Yeap you guessed it, laminate floor was going on sale in about a month, so we decided to wait.

A month later mi chica and the guys went to Costco and bought the floor... finally! Since we already knew the measurements we decided that some 40 boxes or so would do the whole house, final tally $1,300.00 give or take. We were told that the floor would have to be inside the house for at least three days prior to installation for the wood to get acclimated to our house. We, well -- we played it safe and let it sit in our den for four months.

On Thanksgiving weekend my brother in law came from California and saw the floor and said that he would be glad to help us but was very short on time, so he opened one of the packages and basically told us how to do it. It sounded simple enough so the next day after all our guests returned home we started the project which only took us four days to finish, of course done over a three weekend period. Now our floor is done and the only thing left to do is to install the dividers that go between the tile and the wood and or the carpet and the wood.

So there you have it, that was our laminate floor experience, and the best part was that including the tools be bought such as electric saws and drills and some miscellaneous items the complete project just barely reached $2,000.00, come to think of it we saved about $16,000.00 from the original estimate... wow!