16 Affordable Flooring Options

When it comes to affordable ways to update your home, most people don't automatically think of flooring.  But there is good news! Now it is possible to make your floors beautiful without spending thousands of dollars.  

My little old blog started picking up steam after I shared with the world the transformation of my laundry room floors.

And, not long after that, I used inexpensive materials to transform our guest bathroom floors.

These posts generated so much interest that I thought it would be a good idea to share with you guys some other awesome flooring transformations that were completed on a budget. The best place for me to do my research? Hometalk!  For those of you who don't know, Hometalk is sorta like Pinterest, but only for home decor.  So there is no fitness, recipes, fashion, humor, but there is tons of AMAZING home ideas. From paint to flooring, gardening to organization, if you need home inspiration, Hometalk is a great place to go searching for it! Just click on the photo below and enjoy reading about some truly ingenious people who have transformed their floors on a budget. 

Enjoy, and good luck with your flooring DIY!
- Jesse

Peel & Stick tile strikes again!

In November I shared with you how I transformed the dated linoleum floor in our laundry room using inexpensive peel and stick tile.  It turned out to be one of my favorite projects to date not only because it made the room look so much better for such little money, but also because my hubs and I had a lot of fun doing it together.  So, I decided I should do it again in a different room :)

About a year and a half ago, I shared with you our guest bathroom mini makeover, and to answer your question, no, I still haven't forgotten what a pain in the ass that "mini" makeover was.  Although the mini makeover definitely helped bring that room into the 21st century, it was still a long way from perfect. (As a matter of fact, it is still a long way from perfect, but baby steps).  The main thing about that room I still hated was the toilet.  I'm pretty sure it was as old as the house (26 to be exact) and it was showing its age.  The bowl was stained and gross and though I tried all the Pinterest hacks out there for cleaning a stubborn toilet, none of them did the job.  I got the Kohler Devonshire toilet for Christmas, and I'm in love with it. I'm in love with my new toilet. Don't judge me.

 Ain't she purdy?

But, it didn't really make sense to me to install a new toilet and not do something about the hideous floors while I was at it.  

See what I mean? Pretty hideous.  So I picked out some wood-like peel and stick tile. 

This is the name of the stuff we put in, and it is from Lowe's.  It's slightly more expensive than the fake tile that we put in the laundry room at about $2 per plank (versus 88 cents per tile in the laundry room), but still significantly less expensive that real wood or tile.   We had a box of 30 planks and only used 26 of them.  So that's about $50.   

And in my personal opinion, the results are truly beautiful.  See for yourself:

Since this bathroom is upstairs and used primarily for guests, the shower doesn't get used very often.  I'm not sure how well peel and stick would hold up in a bathroom that gets daily use, but in my opinion, even if it only lasts a year, you've gotten your money's worth because its just so cheap!  It's really a smart choice to hold you over until you can afford a bigger make over.  

We started the project around 1pm by removing the old toilet, and had the new floors and new toilet and the entire room put back together by 10pm that same day.  Honestly, the toilet took more time to install than the floors because we were newbies at that.  Not to mention, it was fun!  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon/night :)

For more information on how to install peel and stick tile, see my previous post, here.

So now all that is left to make this room complete is new counters/sinks, new lighting, new faucets, framing the mirror, and repairing the door frame that my dog chewed up.  Yup, I still haven't done that.  Again, please don't judge me.

What do you guys think?  Have you fallen for peel and stick as hard as I have?

As always, thank you! I hope you enjoyed your visit!

 -Jesse 

Affordable Flooring Upgrade

When we purchased our home, all the flooring had been tastefully redone, with the exception of the laundry room and the upstairs bathroom. Those two rooms still had the original 1980's linoleum. They were pretty damn ugly. Behold...

The laundry room even had brown stains that I couldn't get off for the life of me. 

As hideous as the linoleum was, I couldn't bring myself to do anything expensive in the laundry room because, after all it was just a laundry room. I consider painting the floors but was afraid that as soon as I tried to bring the washer and dryer back into the room I'd scratch and ruin my newly painted floors.

Then a couple weeks ago my mother in law suggested peel and stick tile and I thought it was the perfect solution for our laundry room. When I went to Lowe's and found tile that almost perfectly matched the existing tile in both our downstairs bathrooms, I figured it was meant to be.

See what I mean? It blends in perfectly with the tile we already had!

This really was such an easy and affordable project. Here's the breakdown:

1. Clean floors thoroughly and allow them to dry.
2. Find center point of room and begin laying tile from there.
3. When you get to the edges/corners, trim the tile to the size needed using scissors or a razor blade.
4. For tricky edges (around door trim, etc) create a template out of paper and trace it onto the back of the tile before cutting it out.

At 88 cents per tile, this project cost us a grand total of $38, and took less than 4 hours! Not bad for a brand new floor. 

Do you have any creative ideas for updating your floors on a budget? As always, thanks for stopping by!

Love,

Jesse