WWYD: Flooring Dillema

[darkling_glory]

So, my husband and I are buying a house.

The first floor is all hardwood (yay!) except for the front room which is carpeted.

The stairs and the upstairs are carpeted. The carpet is gross and needs to come up. We were simply planning on replacing it, but when we were in Home Depot last night I realized we could get Pergo (laminate) for less than new carpet. Home Depot is running a $500 whole house installation deal right now.

Would you put laminate upstairs while having hardwood downstairs? I am 99% certain this would not bother me. Eventually (10 years from now) we'd refinish the downstairs hardwood and probably redo everything... but for now, we NEED new flooring upstairs.

I'd still recarpet the one front room downstairs.

What do you think? Does this sound like a good idea?

[gtkim]

Before you make a decision based solely on price, check the fine print on the installation costs.  When we replaced the carpet in our old house they (HD) were doing a $99 installation special.  But that didn't include removing the old carpet, or carpeting the stairs which cost a lot more, as well as a couple of other things we had to pay extra for as it was more than normal effort.

[nessness]

Assuming your upstairs is bedrooms, I would prefer new carpet in the bedrooms over laminate. But that's just personal preference; I don't think there's anything wrong with having hardwood downstairs and laminate upstairs, especially if you use a high quality laminate.

[sillygoosegirl]

If ever there was a good place to put laminate, it's in the bedrooms. Where it is clean and in good condition, it really does look like hardwood unless you look pretty closely. The problem is that it doesn't hold up very well. Ours gets bad scuff marks from shoes (think like a gym floor), and it can be badly damaged by wet shoes, improper mopping, or scratches. But in a low traffic area where people aren't eating much food, wearing dirty shoes that much, mopping that much, etc, I think I'll hold up pretty well.

I would hesitate to put it on the stairs. Stairs get a lot of traffic, significantly more dirty/wet shoe traffic than most other places in the house. Any chance you can afford to get hardwoods installed on just the stairs now?

[darkling_glory]

Thanks sillygoosegirl

I didn't think of the stairs issue... we could probably do hardwood treads. I'll have to price that out.

I think along the same lines as you in terms of the low-traffic-ness of the upstairs. We have no kids and one dog, so I don't think it will get too scuffed up.

Honestly, though, my parents put Pergo in their basement 4 years ago and I can't find a single scuff mark. And my husband and I have been living down here (with our dog) for the last 5 months, so I think it would hold up just fine.

gtkim - that's a good point about the installation special. I'll have to check on that.