I have seen some charming things done with plywood flooring that has been painted in a checkerboard pattern with porch paint then sealed with a clear coat

Probably not the end look you want, but it is probably DIYable for not to much $

And at least it would be clean and new and you and your family would not be working around the ick factor.

If I read correctly, the carpet is not part of the kitchen, so that shouldn't be counted as part of the "temporary" kitchen redo. So if you need new carpet in the rest of the house, get it.

As far as the kitchen flooring, you might want to check into a floating floor system which could then be added to or subtracted from with the kitchen redo...you can buy some extra for that purpose and to replace any parts that might get damaged during the reno process. I believe you can get this in wood, cork, or linoleum.

Otherwise, it's really about the durability of the floor and if it can stand up to the major reno...very few floors would except maybe porcelain tile.

Else, you can find a way to make do with the existing floor with some well placed inexpensive olefin or polypropylene runners to cover the worst of it. Save your money for the real redo.

Interest rates are near historic lows right now. Whatever you will spend on temporary fixes (while being dissatisfied with what you have) could turn out to be more than the interest you would pay if you took out a loan and had the work done now. Just a thought.

I would definitely not spend $4,000 for a floor that will get ripped out in a few years when you do the whole kitchen reno. A floating floor might be a solution---espcially if you can pick it up at Restore or similar place for next to nothing and DIY. Or, could you do cheap vinyl squares with the sticky backing (Restore, Lowe's/HD) and just put them right over your existing floor...a quick, cheap fix which will freshen up the space and you won't feel guilty ripping it out in a few years.

Thanks for the feedback!

Let me clarify a few things. The $4000 number is the original $1000 for just the kitchen refresh plus approx. $3000 to put a "cheap" floating vinyl/laminate floor down over 1400 sq. feet (the ENTIRE main floor is bad) if I guesstimate $2/sq. ft. in materials.

So I guess my real dilemma is what do I do about 1400 sq. ft of floor that NEEDS to come out now and will ultimately be replaced with hardwood but we will be doing a kitchen reno in 5 years?

Graywings - as much as we don't like to incur debt, we hadn't thought of it that way. Thanks for the thought!

I can surely understand not wanting to spend money on a floor that will be ripped out down the road. Is there a way you can cover most of it with outdoor rugs? They are not too expensive and can be hosed off, and possibly you can someday reuse them on a patio.

I just looked...Lowes/HD have vinly peel n stick squares for as low as $.38 SF...that would be about $550 for 1400 SF...not a fortune to see you through the next 5 years. Or I would just do rugs and live with it. Painting the cabs is a lot of work...you may just want to live with those as well. If you simply cannot stand the green laminate counters..you could also replace them with pre-made, off the shelf counters from Lowes/HD. You could probably do everything for less than $1,000. I wouldn't invest any more than that....

If hardwood is the "forever" floor, can you put that now in the rooms that need new carpet and then later match the kitchen floor to it?
For the kitchen, how about plywood flooring?

Here is a link that might be useful: DIY plywood flooring

If you can get the old floor up, you can put down a painted canvas floor and polyurethane it... makes a very durable floor covr and can be painted to look like whatever you want it to. There are lots of "how-to"s online. best wishes

I'm not sure I would do peel and stick vinyl if I was planning on ripping it out later. A floating floor I would think would be easier to remove DIY (which you may not be doing).

I don't know what type/grade of hardwood flooring you're planning on having, but there are some limited hardwood options out there for 2.00 a sqft and under. I think Build direct has some prefinished solid hardwood options. We paid 900.00 for 1000 sqft of character/cabin grade unfinished solid oak that we installed and finished ourselves. We had never installed or finished hardwood flooring before, It was a fair amount of work but not difficult to do. I love how they turned out, they're unique having more variation and interest to them, they're very durable, forgiving, and hide everything. That said not everyone likes the look of character grade flooring, it is rustic/older looking and more casual.

If you are thinking about DIY painting your kitchen cabinets, you might want to consider buying a decent quality paint sprayer. We recently invested in one because we are replacing and painting all the dark stained simple trim and doors in our home (60's split entry). It's been a great time saver, it gives a nice smooth opaque even finish. I love not having to thin latex or oil base paints at all with it because it's a no stand, smaller hand held airless type of sprayer, not an HVLP sprayer.

We are DIYers so we do plan to do a lot of the work including installing the hardwood when the time comes. It won't be the first hardwood floor we've installed. In fact, we've helped family install two within the past year. And as DIYers we have a fair sized tool arsenal including a paint sprayer we used on the cabs in our previous home. Thanks for the suggestions though!

I agree with roobear about the peel 'n stick. We have a mess of that in the master bath and it is NOT fun to take out and just adds more prep work. We are afraid that we will have to face the same sticky mess if we take up the sheet vinyl.

As for floor coverings, I've done the best I can already with rugs (at least one in each room) but there are several places where throwing down a rug would look ridiculous and doesn't make sense.

Not sure exactly what type of hardwood we are going with yet, but my decor is a blend of cottage/farmhouse so I have a lot of rustic elements and have in fact looked at character grade woods since I love variation.

We thought about putting in some of the hardwood, but there isn't a room we aren't going to alter on the whole main floor besides the foyer and powder room! We are putting in a wide cased opening in the wall between the formal living and family room; not sure what the final kitchen layout will be, but it may span the current kitchen and morning room; and I would LOVE to bring the laundry up from the basement which may mean converting the current dining room into a laundry/mud/walk-in pantry. I included a link to the updated version of our floorplan by Ryan (ours isn't exactly the same, but very, very similar).

I'm really not trying to be difficult with your suggestions! It's just that many of them have already occurred to us and been discarded (I am a home decor blog addict).

Here is a link that might be useful: Floor Plan

I would gel stain the cabinets, it is much easier than painting and requires little prep. Look for floating floors on clearance at HD, Lumber Liquidators or Floor and Decor. Floor and Decor has some laminate flooring for around .79/ ft. Add new laminate counters from Lowes or Hd and you could get away around $2000.

We live in a moderately priced (for our area) tract home. In 2011, our kitchen had seen its better days -- but the housing bust had home prices in our neighborhood dropping like rocks. It didn't make sense to put in a 10K+ kitchen, even if we planned to stay here a few more years. Like you, I had the orange oak cabinets and the crappy floor that wasn't going to last much longer. I had the additional challenge of aging appliances that were starting to break down.

We were able to totally refresh our kitchen for under $4K. We got a great Black Friday deal on stainless appliances. We chose an in stock laminate counter top and 'teak' Allure vinyl plank flooring from Home Depot. Our one splurge was a roll of sheet copper that we hammered for texture and used as a backsplash. We were also slow and choosy about adding quirky, fun, but classy accessories.

I found a lot of inspiration in this thread: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg1223260219606.html and chose, like Marcolo, to make the old cabinets blend in.

It works. I've had tons of compliments. My two favorites:

From a friend - "It looks like something you'd see in a magazine."

From my former kitchen designer brother - "I've installed kitchens that cost 5 times as much and don't look as good."

I'm particularly pleased with the Allure flooring. It's easy to care for, not cold underfoot and it's got a little 'give' to it that I think my 14 year old dog appreciates.

You're young. You've got small kids and a lot of living ahead of you. If your next five years are anything like my last 25, they may fly by and as they do, your money could be flying by as well (braces, lessons, college). Maybe you'll have the $$ to make the eventual improvements you want, maybe you won't. If you've got the money in hand, I don't think you'll regret spending the two thousand for a decent looking, hard working, serviceable floor now.

Best of luck to you!

Here is a link that might be useful: Design Around Challenge Honey Oak

Maybe it's been mentioned but have you checked out a carpet outlet store? We've used discounted carpet from these stores and always saved a bundle. They carry all types, even vinyl, and their installation guys do quality work.
I used a short- loop commercial grade carpet in 10x20 room in the shop and paid a little over $200....installed.

"I'm particularly pleased with the Allure flooring. It's easy to care for, not cold underfoot and it's got a little 'give' to it that I think my 14 year old dog appreciates."

I will second this. It's also comfortable under *my* older feet, and while it's not cold underfoot, it's also pleasantly cool in the summer. It's also easy to DIY, and you can lay it over existing flooring, and it's easy to remove because the planks adhere to each other and not to what's underneath.

For us, it also makes more sense in a kitchen than hardwood. And it's very forgiving when a glass or dish accidentally slips out of a hand. We got ours during Home Depot's flooring sale.

By the way, I don't know if you read the Young House Love blog, but I believe they're in NoVa as well. The post below talks about their recent hardwood flooring purchase, including asking for a discount : ) .

Here is a link that might be useful: Young House Love post about buying hardwood flooring

Why not put down the vinyl plank floor as a permanent flooring material? It's very nice, we have a version of it - ours was from Lowes and is now discontinued (we got it for 80 cents/sq ft!). It's easy to install, very easy to clean - great for kids!! Sure, real hardwood is nicer but it is about 10x more expensive including installation.

I don't think you can get carpet installed for less than $2/sq ft either so I'd do the Allure or similar product on the entire ground floor and live with that for at least 10 years.

Gel stain the cabinets, and then splurge on nice countertops.

Life is short, I like to figure out what I want and how I can afford it now, and go ahead and do it so I can enjoy it for years. I would never do home improvements on a loan, personally. Not a good financial situation to get into - and personal loan rates are not all that low. I would consider buying materials on a store credit card with 0% financing over a year or two, however.

Here's our floor as I was installing it - only tools needed are a sharp carpet knife and a carpenter's square, it's score and snap.

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{{!gwi}}

This post was edited by tinan on Sun, Jun 9, 13 at 19:50

Thanks for the great comments! DH and I really appreciate the different points of view.

edeevee and tinan - you've given us good food for thought. We are already seeing our "costs" go up with the kids as they get older (food, extracurricular activities, etc.) and while we hope to have enough for a complete reno in 5 years, that may not happen! The kitchen is not the only thing that needs updating/replacing around here! So putting in an affordable but fairly nice floor that we can enjoy 5(+) years is sounding more and more reasonable.

Our major hesitation has been that vinyl plank is "beneath" the standard of our neighborhood, but as I read elsewhere on GW, while it may not increase the value of our home, it certainly won't decrease it! It will be worlds of improvement over what we have now and besides there are no plans to sell.

Still I wonder how bad it would be if we installed the hardwood now and come reno time, taking it up and reusing it. Any thoughts on that? Perhaps I should ask in the Flooring forum.

I apologize for the highjack...

Roobear, can you give me more info on your sprayer? I desperately need one, and I'm lost looking at all of the options. Thanks!

I know it's possible to pull up hardwood flooring, but I don't think it's easy and it might damage some of the boards or finish on them, so you would have to most likely reinstall and refinish.

With your situation of having future construction plans with the home, I'm kind of thinking the plywood option isn't a bad idea, as it could be the underlament when you're ready to lay the hardwood flooring so you wouldn't have to remove it. I would think it would hold up fairly well for a few years with kids, pets, and construction, if you put decent poly on it.

Franksmom, the paint sprayer we bought is called a Graco TrueCoat II Plus (250.00 at Lowes). It's not at all like the cheaper Wagner paint sprayers you see, it's made by one of the best companies that make professional paint sprayers. It's a handheld (no stand) airless paint sprayer so it has a paint container attached to the gun. Because it's an airless type and not an HVLP type of sprayer, you don't have to thin latex paints, you can use them right out of the paint can, so you have much thicker coats/coverage in one pass when sprayed on. It's easier to clean (IMHO) and you can work with smaller amounts of paint because it has the paint cup attached to the gun instead of of stand type where you have tubes that feed from large gallon or 5 gallon paint cans.

There are different versions of the Graco Truecoat, we went with Truecoat II Plus because it has a flexible pump tube so you can tip the gun upwards or turn it sideways and the paint will still siphon to the sprayer (good for painting ceilings), and it offered an adjustable air pressure knob, so you can adjust the spray pressure for more control (a little less overspray) and for the thickness of the paint you're using. Also it is repairable, and you can buy parts for it, some of the older Truecoat models are not repairable.

They do sell different tips you can buy for the sprayer to give you different spray size and for different thicknesses of materials (latex paint vs thin stain), they also make a larger container cup, a back pack attachment kit that can hold up to a gallon of paint so you don't have to use the container cup attachment and refill as often. You can also purchase more plastic bag cup liners so cleanup is easier.

The cons to this sprayer are, it's heavy because the paint container is attached to the gun, you have to refill more often because it uses a smaller amount of paint at a time, and you get more overspray and go through paint much faster than you do with an HVLP sprayer because it's airless. The overspray will be decent so make sure you mask/cover things well when using. Clean up takes about 20-30 min and you have to make sure you take the time to do it properly, and masking/covering to protect from overspray can take some time, however the upside is you can paint 10 doors in about 10 min with it.

I second the suggestion of a floating floor. Your kids are really young and likely to damage a wood floor to some extent . I have the Allure in my kitchen and bathroom and people are always complement me on my beatiful wood floor and are shocked when I tell them its not wood. The wood grain is built right into the texture of the flooring it you look at the picture posted you can see it. Its really easy to install the down fall is it cost too much for what it is the upside is its easy to apply/remove and it really does look like real wood. Allure has had major problems with not sticking so don,t buy the origenal produce but its worth looking at the newer version they seem to have overcome that issue. Lowes had a simular product that was much more reasonalby priced than the Allure at Home depo. I think it was called Novis. There was a really long thread on the flooring forum about Allure that would be worth looking at.

Don't count on any improvements increasing the value of your home. Right now, as a recent short sale that needs some TLC, anything will increase it's value anyway. Only kitchen and baths renos come close to recouping costs on increased value, flooring does not. Most of a home's value comes from its location and size, the rest are relatively minor players.

Fix the house up to your standards and your needs - besides you said this is a long term home, so why consider resale value at this point in time?