When I inherited my childhood home, the first thing improvement I made was ripping out the carpet. My mom loved having carpet in the house. The only room that we didn't have carpet was the kitchen. Even the bathrooms had carpet. Gross, I know.

I put hardwood downstairs and tiled the bathrooms and kitchen. I had initially planned to put hardwood on the stairs, hallway and bedrooms. Several people talked me out of this idea, arguing that it would be too costly and difficult. They argued that carpet has a nicer look and feel. In America, there seems to be a generational preference towards carpet. I feel like the older generations really push towards sticking with carpet, yet most of my friends that are in my generation, want wood.

The old people persuaded me and five years ago, I bought carpet. It was plush, cream colored and expensive. Fancy carpet. It looked beautiful.

I have two cats and although they are housebroken and well behaved, they still shed. Fur can problematic in thick carpet. No vacuum can quite keep it all clean. Cats sometimes cough up hairballs and I don't always notice them until a stain has set in. Let it be known that Stainmaster carpet an be defeated by cat puke. Slowly, the beautiful carpet, looked less beautiful and more grimy.

Last month, we decided to do something about it and headed to Lowe's Home Improvement. They had a good offer running on laminate flooring including installation. We had a really great experience with Lowes, but more on that in a future post.

The hardest thing was picking the right color flooring so that the laminate on the stairs didn't clash with the existing hardwood downstairs. We went with American Beech. It's not the same, but they both have a warm reddish tone that compliment rather than clash.

I was a little nervous about going with laminate rather than hardwood. However, the deal was so good that if it doesn't wear well, it won't seem like such a waste to replace it down the road. It looks just as nice as the hardwood.

We left carpet in the guest bedroom, but had the laminate put on the stairs, hallway and in the master bedroom. We had to take all of our bedroom furniture and temporarily store it on the patio. It was quite a task.

Here are some before pictures with the dirty carpet.

it took two men, a day and half to finish the job. I was impressed that unlike other contractors from other major home improvement stores (ahem HOME DEPOT), they were professional. They even covered Dan's car and put out a sign to alert the neighbors.

Here are a few shots of the work in progress.

We love the finished result and can't stop smiling over how beautiful our new floors look.

The transition from bedroom to tiled bathroom.

We have one last step to finish the project. Since the carpet sat higher than the laminate, we have to do touch up painting around the edges. It should really look great once the painting is complete.