[DesignDiva]

I'll give a review of how easy it is (I am EVER the optimist LOL)! We're redoing our son's room while they are away at camp. We're going from a Nascar electric blue walls, black and white checkerboard flooring to wasabi green walls, oak flooring and steel and white furnishings for our budding junior-higher.

[laurie]

eva -- we'll probably be doing much the same in a year or so for our then-to-be teenage son. He also has the black-n-white vinyl checkerboard floor (how funny), but he has red walls. Also decorated with nascar/harley stuff. Red was his favorite color, but now he's partial to green. Who knows what he'll want when it's time to change. Perhaps you'll give me inspiration.

[stacylu]

Eva

How did it go? Are you going to share pics with us?



Stacy

[DesignDiva]

Almost done...we just have the final three strips which need to be cut down lengthwise, so we decided not to haul out the table saw at 10 PM last night and get that part done this morning.

Overall it went quite easily...we were thankful there was no glue! We did about 750 SF of wood parquet, glued down, and the glue comes in a big 5-gallon bucket and as the day goes on it gets stickier and sticker in there.

I hate flooring, because I have trouble with my knees and lower back, but this was pretty easy. We laid it over vinyl tile, and with the foam sheet it's fairly quiet. It's definitely a two person job, though, because to line the whole board up and get it to click evenly across the length requires two people. I did the clicking and foam, DH did the clicking and sawing. And the measuring LOL

So as soon as we're all done we'll take pix!

	DH definition DH usually means Dear Husband (or, pick your own adjective starting with D).

[DesignDiva]

Well the floor is in, and quite lovely. DH and I had quite a discussion as to its durability (it has a 10 year warranty, DH thinks that it will last 10 MONTHS LOL) and I reminded him of the patch of flooring at the IKEA store that has been walked on by thousands and thousands of people and still looked good. He had to admit it might last a bit longer (like maybe a year LOL). Still, for $1 a SF you can't beat it. It looks WAY better than the vinyl tile we had before.

The installation was pretty straightforward, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the d*^)@$#! tipout sink drawers) I would say it was a 3 or 4. You do have to use a saw, and possibly a power saw, and it takes a bit of finagling to get it to click right, but other than that the instructions on the website were accurate.

There were no instructions in ANY of the boxes, don't know why! But the little silent video on the website is fine.

	DH definition DH usually means Dear Husband (or, pick your own adjective starting with D).

[DesignDiva]

Well we are done, here for your viewing pleasure are pix of our son's room:

Here's the before, as an example. Dark blue walls, checkerboard floor, white and silver shelves and furniture. This area is where the desk is now:



The walls were repainted a pale celadon green called Rejuvenate. We cut down his TROMSO loft bed by two feet to lower it. Then we added two ROBIN dressers underneath:





The desk area features several IKEA elements. There is a very flexible storage cart underneath the desk, which has varied storage areas on all four sides, plus it's on casters!





Shelves above desk, hanging from a track attached to the top plate of the wall:



And finally, the HEMSE floor. It was fairly straightforward in installation, I'd give it a 3 on a scale of 1-10 for an experienced handy person.

[dafogle]

Eva - your sons' room looks great ... I'm sure he's thrilled... and I hope your DH is wrong and the floors will last until you want to replace them....

Doreen

	DH definition DH usually means Dear Husband (or, pick your own adjective starting with D).

[laurie]

Eva, I really like that bed and how you lowered it. With the drawers underneath, it's kinda like a captain's bed. I figure our son won't want a bunk bed as a teenager, but he would certainly not mind it that high. And great use of space, too. (I believe our sons bedroom is only 10 x 11).

[DesignDiva]

I think the floors will be fine...I tried a little bit to scratch them by moving furniture around, but they were up to the challenge! Matchbox cars don't seem to bother it, either.

This room, if you can believe it, is only 9'x9.5', with a closet on one long wall and the entry door on the perpendicular wall. We had to be efficient with space!

The bed is about 4 feet high at the top of the rails, and easier to change the sheets! It's got tons of storage underneath, too. When it was a loft bed we had a wall-to-wall desk under there with shelving above, which could seat two kids side by side for video games, projects, etc. He does have less desk space now but he has more storage space which was really important.

[chabuchie]

If you need any reassurance about the durability of laminate, I dragged my new bathroom vanity across it last week. There were no scratches, but some of the stain that I thought was dry left big, long, stickystreaks. I was really freaked out when I couldn't get it off just by wiping it with a Clorox wipe (that's all I ever use on that floor), but it came off with Windex and a paper towel. And that was after leaving it for a few days, so it had plenty of time to stain(I know it sounds lazy, but I was really sick).