Why You Should Choose Laminate Flooring – Kitchen Makeover Week 4

Our home has featured these Brazilian cherry engineered floors…

…until a few days ago.

As lovely as those floors were, they were a bit too orange for our tastes, and they scratched terribly. With two kids and a dog, they were looking a little worse for wear. And for us, the best choice was easy. Laminate.

If you have never considered laminate before, get ready to have your mind blown. Laminate is durable, affordable, attractive, and easy to install. It’s also the DIYers dream.

A few years ago my husband and I fixed up our first home together. We replaced the awful mix of vinyl, carpet, linoleum, and tile with laminate flooring, which we installed ourselves.

We loved the new floors, though the install experience was not the greatest. The flooring we purchased was difficult to click together, requiring that each piece be wedge together along the long and short sides. Pieces would not stay together well, so that an entire row would have to be assembled before carefully being pushed into place. Add to that hassle, our then 13 month old son thought it was a great game to run across the last row, knocking it all off over and over. More than anything, I just recall being so tired as we installed that floor. Oh, and I was eight months pregnant during that install. So there’s that.

You might wonder why, after that experience, we choose laminate again. Because the fact is, even if we ran into some of the same install issues, the end product would have been worth it. But I’m here to tell you that if you heard the heavens open and angelic choirs singing this week, and you wondered what that was all about, it was for us and our flooring.

Because this time around I partnered with Select Surfaces to install their elite line of laminate in Driftwood, and OH MY GOSH. Look, I know you just want to see the after photos. But hear me out. This stuff is a dream. The click system is rock solid and goes together simply with no fuss. The pieces come with a pre-attached backer, and the pieces are varied enough to make install easy.

My husband and I tackled this entire kitchen space in a few hours, and the transformation is…well, take a look:

Let’s take a look at that side by side:

A closer look:

I love how the rustic Driftwood style goes with the clean, crisp cabinetry.

This same flooring flows through the adjacent butler’s pantry and throughout the downstairs of the entire house. It is a work in process, as we have to change a couple walls first, but soon these beautiful floors will carry through all of the main rooms and it will be glorious.

What do you think? Have you considered laminate? If you haven’t, give it a look!

A big thank you to the good folks at Select Surfaces, who partnered with me to make this happen! Keep following to see how this look transforms our entire home!