laying laminate flooring in the basement

We installed flooring in the basement office, playroom and family room a couple weekends ago! My dad owns a flooring business, which comes in really handy at times like this! He is very knowledgeable on trends and materials (i.e., what would be too cold in a basement), and we were able to visit his showroom a few different times to make final decisions. Choosing flooring can be so overwhelming! It's such a big decision.

The flooring was shipped to Des Moines and I used two of my lunch breaks to pick it up from the distribution warehouse.

Pro tip: Measure the jumbo roll of laminate pad before ordering, to make sure it fits through your doorway. Ha!

FAMILY ROOM

I've had this laminate picked out for over a year. It's Mannington Time Crafted Maple in Dried Tobacco. I love the French bleed (the stain technique that makes the boards look worn in the middle and darker on the outside). My friend Heidi has it in her house, which is where I first saw it.

We put this flooring in the playroom, walkway and family room, so it covers most of the basement. The playroom and family room will also have rugs to cozy them up a little bit. Especially in the playroom, I want the kids to feel comfortable on the floor, but we went with laminate because we want the space to be able to evolve into a craft or photography room down the road.

It took us six hours to lay all of this! My dad and Eric did most of the work, and I tried to help out where I could. Rooney caught on too and was such a sport helping to lay out the next planks and carry out empty boxes.

Here is a final look...I promise it looks a lot better without all the dust :-)

OFFICE

It is hard to capture the correct shade in photos, but this gray laminate is what we picked for the office. It's Quick-Step Veresque Stonewash Oak Planks. I knew I wanted gray planks but it was hard to find something that had good color variation and looked and felt realistic (this is a similar option I loved in luxury vinyl planks). We had a good system down by this point and this room is much smaller so it only took us an hour! I'm so pleased with how it turned out!

Here is what it looks like where the two rooms meet:

So that's where we are! Next we are moving a piece of carpet from our upstairs living room to the basement guest bedroom and installing black luxury vinyl tile planks up there. Then we need to pick out bathroom tile! As of now we are thinking black pebbles on the shower floor, black luxury vinyl tile for the rest of the bathroom floor (less cold on your feet), and white subway tile for the walls.

Then we will add trim, doors and furniture! Still lots left to do, but flooring makes a huge impact!