New floors!

Well, got through cleaning quicker than I thought, so I decided to go ahead and post this. When we moved into this house 3 years ago, we immediately ripped up old carpet and installed some laminate flooring. Now we loved our laminate floors, but at the time they were cheap and we liked the color, so that's what we got. Fast forward 3 years, 2 dogs, and a pain in the butt to keep clean later and we were ready for a change. I wanted something easier to clean, wouldn't get scratched up as bad by the dogs, and show every single paw print when they get wet. Now no matter what people tell you, laminate flooring (and even hardwood floors) are not scratch resistant, cleaners create a buildup over time, and when wet they will start buckling. We found a product that is vinyl plank flooring (made by Allure at Home Depot), and it is water resistant, holds up to scratching, comes with a 25 year warranty, and is super easy to install.....it literally took Buddy 3 days to do our living room, hall, and dining room. This stuff will go over existing floors, needs no extra padding, has rubber bottoms and sticks to each other. They have many colors (some are special order only, and they also offer tile), we went with Country Pine. I never in a million years would have pictured me as having light colored floors in my house, but I have to admit that Buddy was right about this color. I remembered seeing vinyl plank floating around on Pinterest and had actually looked at it....I am amazed how many people are now doing this throughout their homes for durability etc, it makes perfect sense. For what you could spend on some hardwoods and laminate, you can get this product for as much, and loads cheaper in some aspects. Bonus is if we ever tire of it, or when we sell our house the new owners don't like it, it can be removed easily and our dark laminate floors will be underneath. If you're thinking of doing floors, or redoing them, go check it out! I want to redo our kitchen and laundry room now with the tile version. Here is the living room before with laminate floors:

And here's the vinyl plank in Country Pine:

The hall before:

And with vinyl plank:

Dining room before:

And with vinyl plank:

I absolutely love these floors. They're soft, quiet, easy to clean and I love the color! I'm excited to have some family and some of our best friends over tomorrow night for our Christmas Eve party. Hope that y'all have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Update: Laundry room & hall

Well, we decided that the ugly gold/yellow color in our laundry room was drabby and made the room look dirty ALL of the time. So we repainted. The color is a blend of different ones to create a custom one that is very pretty. Here is the horrible color in question:

And here's the after:

We moved our small bookcase over to the other wall that holds our shoes, and moved this old dresser from the hall into here to "dress" it up a bit:

Then we moved my HUGE bookcase from this wall into the hall, and moved our "shoe shelves" over here and hung up one of my moms paintings:

Here is the hall before:

And the hall once we moved the bookcase. This thing was not easy to maneuver from the laundry room to here. But, it was worth it:

That's it! We're ready for our Christmas Eve party with our families and awesome friends!!