No More Carpet in the House- Reasons Why We Removed All of Our Carpet
Three days before Christmas last year I had a crazy idea, I decided that I wanted to rip out the carpet in my son’s bedroom and replace it with laminate flooring. I’m not sure why I decided to do this 3 days before Christmas, maybe a cat had just peed on the floor or I was sick of the way it never looked clean or I was just ready for a project on my house. What I didn’t realize at the time was that that room would make me want to replace ALL THE CARPET in our house. But it did, I wanted to replace all of it because of how gross carpet it is. The more rooms we did, the more I wanted to redo another room. After a year, I’m happy to say that there is NO MORE CARPET IN THE HOUSE! And I cannot be happier about it. Never again will I have carpet in my house and I’m here to tell you why in this post.
Before we get the wonderful after pictures, I have to share the before pictures and all the carpet that was in the house. Our house was built in 2010, so some of the carpet was 11-12 years old. So of course it didn’t look great. Even when we moved in 8 years ago, it didn’t look great. I never liked the carpet, it was ugly, even when it was new. Like most homes, we had a lot carpet in our house, over 1800 square feet. I was never sad when I ripped it out :).
This is our living room, we actually replaced the carpet in there just a year after living here. We put some nice hardwood in there because the carpet in main living areas get worn down quickly, it’s hard keep clean and nice.
We had carpet on our stairs and they were just trashed! Seriously, so bad.
Here is our loft area upstairs, one of my major problems with the carpet was it clashed with my decor and wall color, I was going for more grays and the beige carpet just looked awful.
Here is one last picture of our carpet, in our bonus room that we turned into a bedroom by building a closet.
Alright let’s talk about some of the reasons why I wanted to replace the carpet. The first reason is because they are SO GROSS!! Seriously, so gross. No matter how many times you vacuum in the week or get your carpets cleaned, they never truly cleaned. It only takes one accident or one stain to ruin brand new carpet. I don’t like to think about how many feet, shoes and other things that have been on the carpet, because it’s so dirty. Vacuums will pick up some of the gunk but the dirt gets trapped in there and then into the pad. I was SHOCKED by how much dirt was under our floors.
Here are some visual examples of how disgusting carpet is…
This is my son’s room, the one we did 3 days before Christmas. I wouldn’t say it’s a high traffic area but there was a ton of dirt under the carpet.
Here is a close up of the dirt.
Side note- the three tools I used to rip up the carpet were:
Trim puller– I used that to remove the baseboards and to remove the tack strips.
Rubber mallet– I used that with the trim puller.
Nail nippers– I used those to take out all the staples and nails left over from the tack strips and padding.
This picture does not do the dirt justice, our stairs were DISGUSTING. My husband and I were both covered in dirt when we ripped out the carpet on our stairs. This is what the bottom of the stairs looked like after the carpet was gone and that didn’t even include the dirt that was stuck in the padding. We vacuum our stairs at least weekly and it still didn’t help with the dirt. We have gotten them professionally cleaned twice too. Still disgusting.
Now I’ve talked about dirt, but I haven’t mentioned the germs, allergens and other nasty stuff that are in there too.
Let’s just talk about shoes for a second. Shoes go EVERYWHERE. You wear them outside, in the rain, in the snow, in the mud. You also wear them into stores, into public bathrooms (which I guarantee every single one of us has stepped in pee at some point), into all sorts of places. Now a lot of people wear the shoes into their house also (we do not, we have a strict no shoe policy in our house), tracking in all of the things that they have stepped into onto their floors. With hard floors, you can easily clean up the stuff you track in. With carpet, it’s not that easy. And then when you lay on the floor or your baby is crawling all over it, you are hanging out with a lot of gunk that is in the carpet. This was the major reason why we decided to replace all of the carpet because when you think about how gross it really is. We weren’t going to do all the bedrooms upstairs, but when we saw how gross the stairs were, that changed out minds.
If you have allergies, getting rid of carpet is a must. All that stuff in there can really cause problems for people.
Now hard floors aren’t prefect and they are dirty in their own ways but compared to carpet, they are much cleaner! For example- when we replace the hardwood in our living room area, there was basically NO DIRT underneath it. We had that flooring for 5 years and it keep everything out! I was surprised actually, I thought that were would be more because we had issues with that flooring separating a little bit but even with the spots that weren’t super tight, it kept most of the dirt out.
Now the dirtiness and grossness of carpet played a major role in making us rip out all the carpet in the house, but for me the biggest reason was because hard floors just look so much better than carpet! So now I am at the fun part, I get to show you all the AFTER PICTURES!! I am so happy with my new floors and so excited to share them with you!
If you would like to see all the before pictures of my house, check out my home tour post.
For the majority of the house we used a waterproof, scratch resistant, premium laminate called Soft Oak Glazed. We looked into lots of different floors, including luxury vinyl plank. We decided that we liked the thickness and durability of the laminate compared to the LVP. It felt a little too flimsy for our liking. Just a little tip, if you plan on doing a lot of flooring at once, buy a pallet. They are cheaper. At the store this laminate cost $2.89 per sq ft. When you buy it in a pallet, it only cost $2.51. The savings definitely adds up.
Let’s start at the beginning of my house, my entry way. We had tile in there before, which was great but the color clashed with the gray/white color scheme so we replaced it. Plus we didn’t want to have a transition in the middle of our living room/dining room area.
To the left of the entry way in my son’s bedroom, the one we did first. Yes the flooring in there is a little different, long story short: When I went to order more for the rest of the house, my order kept getting canceled. There wasn’t any in stock at our stores and the closest one was 2 hours away and they still didn’t have as much as we needed. This worried me so I went looking for other options and found the Soft Glazed Oak one and fell in love with it. I didn’t see it before (it was on an end cap in the store and I never saw it). So we did his room differently, but I still love it more than the carpet. The flooring was the same brand as the other one, just another color. It’s called Optimus Pine.
The next room is my craft room, my favorite room in the house. It’s my happy place! This used to have carpet, we replaced it with the hardwood like the living room but the transition between the hardwood and tile always drove me crazy. I love that the laminate flooring just flows into the room. It makes my barn door look awesome.
Here is another view of my craft room. I have these awesome shelves that hold all of my craft supplies. I also built two tables to work on, one is computer desk and the other desk is for all of the vinyl projects, I can store all my vinyl and supplies on it, including my awesome heat press.
Here is another view of my entry way, this one shows the awesome picture frames on the wall, my face mask holder and a growth chart where we keep track of our kids’ heights.
The entry way goes into my dining room, living room and kitchen.
In the living room we replaced also the fireplace tiles.
I love that there is no more transition between my living room and dining room. The new floors make the space look so much bigger!
And in my kitchen, all the white just pops with the light gray floors! We did a lot to our kitchen, you can see it all here.
Now time for the stairs. Whenever anyone says that they are thinking about taking out their carpet on their stairs I don’t hesitate to tell them to do it. I will never have carpet on my stairs again. They always looked so gross and the carpet was so matted down. Not anymore! And they are so easy to clean now! A lot of people have asked if the stairs are slippery with socks, we have not had any problems with kids slipping on them. The stair nose is raised a little bit and that gives it a little more friction.
The stairs go up to the loft area, which is a high traffic area. The laminate floors up there looks amazing!
There are a total of 4 bedrooms upstairs. My daughter’s is to the left of the stairs. Her carpet was awful, it was ruined from slime…. since then, I have banned slimed from my house. Can anyone else relate to that??
She just turned 11, so when we redid her floors we gave her whole room a makeover. She used to have rainbows and unicorns, but now it’s a little more grown up. She chose the colors, blush, cyan and gold for her color scheme. I redid her little night stand, added a fun colored rug and some fun wall art from Hobby Lobby. I also got her a blush chair and an aqua bean bag to put her stuffed animas into.
The next room is my 12 year old son’s room. Can you tell he likes the Denver Broncos? For his room, I made him a couple pillows, one with his football number and one with subway art. We also put in a navy plush rug. Since there isn’t much space in there, we put a little desk in there with a office chair that I redid with a Broncos logo.
The next room used to be a bonus room. We have two boys in there. The room is massive, even with the walk in closet that we built. We have some bunk beds in there and a sectional that turns into a sofa bed. They have Minecraft table that I built them and a black office chair. In the corner there are some foam Minecraft weapons and video game canvases. Since their room is so massive, they got a big 8×10 rug for their room, I found it at Ross.
The last room upstairs is the master bedroom. I love how the floors look in there! This room is also my happy place, I love unwinding here at the end of the day. I also love looking at the floors from my bed. The carpet was just so ugly in there, but the laminate floors are so pretty! It just makes me happy.
Another thing that makes me happy is my fireplace tv stand, I love turning it on the winter time.
And that’s it! That’s my all of the new flooring that we put in this year. We ended up putting in close to 2400 square feet of laminate flooring. It was a lot of work and time but 100% worth it! I have absolutely no regrets! I would do it all over again in a heart beat. Like I said before, I’m never going to buy a house with carpet again.
Now I know you might have some questions or concerns about having no carpet in the house. Well here are a couple solutions to those concerns.
• I know people are concerned with the coldness/hardness. Area rugs are the answer. We have lots of area rugs in there. And if you’re thinking, well rugs are like carpet and have the same issues with dirt and germs, well you’re right. I have found several places with cheaper rugs so I can replace them 1-2 years as they get gross and dirty. Ross has several 8×10 rugs for around $100 and they are great. At Home has LOTS of rugs for great prices. And of course Amazon has lots of options for under $50.
• Another concern is walking on hard floors. This has been a problem for me and my plantar fasciitis has flared up. My solution, I have INDOOR shoes that I wear. And when I say indoor, I mean that I only wear them in my house. Never outside. I found a good pair of slip on sandals that has made my pain go away and I don’t have any issues.
• Another concern is how to clean the floors. Since our floors are very light, you can see lots of dirt and footprints on them. So here is my solution, these 4 products. I love them so much and they have been great!
We have two stick vacuums, one for upstairs and one for downstairs.
The little white one is the brand Tineco. This little thing is amazing, I love it so much. I actually like it better than my Shark stick vacuum. Both vacuums are great and use them multiple times a day (I rarely sweep anymore). But if I were to buy another one it would be the Tineco because it’s lighter, cheaper and does just as good of job as the Shark.
Now for mopping, I have two mops also. I have a little spray mop for spot cleaning. It has reusable pads so I can replace them frequently. I used the sanitizer solution in it. Then I also use the Bissel Crosswave which is a vacuum and mop and it is AMAZING! I really want the cordless one, but can’t until this one breaks down. Seriously love that mop!
If you are considering ripping out your carpet, DO IT!! I promise, you will not regret it!
Make sure to check my other home improvement projects!
This post contains affiliate links.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.