Sacwal Flooring: Part 1

Today was another decision-making marathon with Joanne.

This time the meeting place was Sacwal Flooring, and I had my Mom with me because Scott was working.



We started with hardwood, and found some nice maple flooring. My stipulations for hardwood were:

1. Hard Maple (We like the grain AND it has a high rating on the Janka hardness scale.)

2. Medium stain (I LOVE dark stained wood, but it is hard to keep looking clean and shows scratches and dents way too much)

3. Not too glossy (Again, it looks awesome but too impractical.)

4. Has to be in our hardwood allowance, and not over budget.

So, these options really narrowed our choices down to about, um, three choices. I quickly choose the one that looked the least red and had the widest planks. It was actually under budget which was amazing.

Then we moved on to tile. This was so fun! I was the most nervous about tile because there are literally thousands of options and we have a lot of bathrooms plus a laundry / mudroom area.

But Joanne really took over here and started pulling out beautiful tiles that matched the countertops so nicely and I have to say that the tile was one of the most fun things I've done yet in the whole building process.

Joanne gets all the credit. And John (The Sacwal owner who was part of the whole process). He was awesome too. They can pick out grout colours like nobody's business. Seriously, it's a well-honed talent.

We even manged to do some cool detail stuff in the bathrooms which I'm so excited about. And again - all within the allowances. I think we may have had one $100 upgrade.

We picked out tile for the fireplace surrounds as well.

Next we moved on to carpet. I took a leap of faith and got the berber / plush blended carpet that Joanne & John simply raved about. It was a nice colour, practical for kids, and again (not to beat a dead horse here) was in the carpet allowance.

Three of the bedrooms will have the same carpet as the stairs / hallway, but I chose a shag carpet for the master and Samantha's room (different colours though).

Finally we moved onto the last flooring area: the basement. This is where Scott and I have had the most discussion on WHAT to get. I hate carpet. He hates laminate. What else can you put in a basement?

We thought we had found a suitable compromise when we found CORK flooring until we saw the prices. $$$ Yikes! More than our hardwood!

We found a cork flooring clearance and the colour was bearable, not great, but okay. We went ahead and selected it.

By this time, it was 2 1/2 hours later and time to go. Joanne had brought her paint samples, but we decided to save that adventure for another day.