The floor was the one major thing I didn't like about our house when we first saw it. The flooring in the kitchen is hardwood, but the planks are wide and satined a very orange color and the don't match the flooring in the rest of the house. Honestly to me they look like sub floors. They had a lot of imperfections, nails, gaps, etc. So needless to say, they didn't exactly match the clean look of the rest of the kitchen.
The easiest, most cost effective solution we decided on was luxury vinyl plank flooring. Its basically like laminate wood flooring, only it's made out of vinyl so it's waterproof. No glue or underlayment necessary. It was pretty easy- I did it all myself. D wanted to help but I found once I got in a rhythm it was easier for one person. He helped me move the fridge though.
Here's our floor before:
So ugly right? There was hope though! We looked at flooring swatches at Home depot, then looked at Menards. Our goal was to find something that was a similar type of wood (Oak I think?) in the rest of the house with a similar tone. We ended up polling on Facebook and deciding between the light and the dark in the below picture (ignore my toes) :
I started to lay down the flooring to see how it would look and honestly, I wasn't so sure at first. It was such a big difference. But D reassured me so I carried on. I started the night before installation by removing all of the shoe molding and cabinet trim and cleaning the floor well to remove dust. I let the floors dry overnight so I could start the next morning.
The next day, I started to lay down the flooring. I started in the left hand corner, which was our entryway. This way, any oddly shaped areas at the end would be against the wall and behind the refrigerator. All done with the entryway and it was looking awesome!
These were literally the only tools I needed. Installing this stuff was pretty easy.
Just to show a difference between the old floor and new floor. Daaaang.
Final transition between kitchen & dining room. I restained the trim strip to match.
The project was one of the best yet and gave us the biggest bag for our buck. All in all, I think we spent around $250 for our new floor and we love it! Next step, crown moulding :)
