Rite Rug Revisited

After our initial apt. failure at Rite Rug I couldn't sleep.  I felt sick about how much money we were spending on the house and questioning everything.  I considered getting everything builder grade and doing upgraded flooring later.  But then I thought about my beautiful cabinets and granite and the thought of putting linoleum in just didn't make sense.  Then there was the issue of the cabinets being the wrong height if we put wood in later.  See I want to extend the cabinets into the morning room and the new cabinets would be on wood and existing would be on linoleum.  They would be about 3/4 inch off.  Then we toyed with having our cabinets raised and having a light install done on the linoleum so its easier to rip out.  None of these options sat well with me.  We are spending a lot of money on the cabinets and granite and I want the kitchen to be really nice.  We talked with our Ryan SR a lot about this and she simply said there is nothing that can be done.  What I wanted her to say is "Hey, we realize the flooring is overpriced...we will throw in the living and dining room for free"  HA! in my dreams...right?

**If I could pick any flooring I wanted I would choose a chocolate brown hand scraped maple floor. **

The wood floor we chose at Rite Rug we found online for $6.00 - $7.00 a sq ft and labor is an additional $2.99 / sq ft.  With a little math Rite Rug was charging $9 a sq ft for wood and 2.99 / sq ft for install.  We feel sick being overcharged like this.  But feel kind of trapped as well.  We don't want to mess up our cabinets or risk a debacle with the flooring later.

Our SR at Ryan set up another apt for us at Rite Rug with a different SR and told us we could "shop the store"  to find what we were looking for.  I accepted this news with a leary attitude.  And of course I was right.  Shop the store meant you can only shop Armstrong wood & Shaw carpet.  Not anything you want.  I was hopefull but kind of expecting this.

After accepting that we would be spending way more than necessary to get the wood floors we wanted we proceeded with the appointment.  This time the SR at rite rug was way more helpful.  She pulled options and really discussed things with us.  This is what we ended up with.

photo from heavenlyhighgrove.blogspot.com

 Armstrong Brown Bear hand scraped 5" wide oak.  A beautiful floor (just too exspensive in my book) in the front entry, kitchen, morning room, powder room, & family entry.  ** We are planning to continue this wood flooring into the living room and dining room later and will purchase it from a less exspensive retailer.

So our temporary flooring in the living/dining rooms is Baseline Carpet White Fox

Study - Baseline Thornwood.  This too will be replacesd shortly after we move in.

Family Room Carpet - Level C upgrade with 8lb pad.  This is Shaw Simple Times Great Plains.  We chose this carpet in our first Ryan home and were happy with it.  It hides stains well and is comfortable underfoot.

Stairs & Second Level Carpet - Shaw Simple Times Quartz.  We are using gray tones in the kids rooms and this color goes well with grays and beiges.  It's kind of a greige color.

Stair railing is being stained to match the wood flooring

Master Bath - since all our money has been spent on the wood floors we went with the standard options and will upgrade later.  I don't feel too bad about this since they didn't have anything I liked anyway.

Initiator vinyl floor & 6X6 white tile on shower & tub.  We chose standard andover maple vanities since we don't like the Ryan homes vanites.  They are plain and the storage stinks.  We will replace these later on.

photo courtesy of heavenlyhighgrove.blogspot.com

Bath #1, Bath #2, and Laundry Room also have the Initiator vinyl.  Andover maple cabinets in all bathrooms.  We plan to paint or Rustoleum transform these to make them accpetable until we can replace them.

Rite Rug apt - Flooring choices BUST!

We had our apt with Rite Rug, the flooring company you work with (in Ohio) for your options.  We drove 30 min to Rite Rug and were greeted by the sales person. She immediatley told be that her assistant had scheduled an apt directly after ours giving us only 45 min to pick the tile and flooring for our entire house!

I started looking at wood flooring first since I knew I wanted this in most of the first floor.  I was shocked at the poor selection!  We had priced out wood floors in our previous home before we decided to move and had really shopped around. We feel like we know EVERYTHING about wood flooring.  That being said we were expecting to pay $7,000 - $8,000 for the Front entry, living room, dining room, kitchen, morning room, family entry, & powder room aproximatley 1200 sq ft.  I picked out the only wood that was remotely close to what I wanted and was quoted a price tag of $16,000!  What the what?   Are these floors made of gold or something.  Needless to say I was deflated at that point.  I decided to move on to tile and revisit the wood later.  Tile was not much better.  They didn't have ANYTHING I wanted!  Wow, another dissapointment.  At this point the other apt showed up and we left without having picked anything.

Feeling really discouraged now.