Weddingbee boards

Thank you everyone for your help on this post!  

We were very torn between laminate and engineered hardwood floors right up till the very end.  It really ended up coming down to price.  I was actually able to get some engineered hardwood floor on sale for almost half as much as the high end laminate I liked.  I couldn't fathom spending $4-$5 per sq ft on "fake" wood.  

Home Depot was so much better for flooring when shopping than Lowes.  First of all, they give away free samples of wood, where Lowes charges $0.99 each.  We went to Home Depot, got a ton of color ranges and then brought them home and picked out the best color range for our house.  Once we had a sample of the color we wanted, it made it so simple to go around to the other stores and shop.  

We ended up getting the floors from Lumber Liquidators.  They were very helpful except for two things.  1.  The salesperson/owner showed us their normal stock of stuff and wasn't really interested in showing us any of the clearance stuff, 2. When we found a clearance board we liked we were told it had to be installed glued.  Since we loved the boards so much and the price was so great, I did a little bit of research.  Turns out the boards can be installed floating.  As soon as we heard this, we bought the floors. 

After letting the floors sit in the house for about a week, my husband and my FFIL and I started installing this weekend.  Here is how they look: 

I love the variation in the wood and the hand-scraped finish! Now we have to pick out some baseboards and maybe even some crown molding! 

When I get some pictures off my camera I will upload a better picture.  This one is from my cell phone so you can't really see the true color/texture. 

The floors are Shaw Engineered Hardwood with a Hand-Scraped finish in Antique Brass Maple (from an old ventura line discontinued in 2009).  

Yay! It sounds like you made a great decision! Congrats, they look great!

@cecullaton:  My husband is at home this week installing 4.5" high baseboards right now!  We are going to keep them white and maybe even add crown molding at some point.  We didn't want to do baseboards over 5" (even though I love them) because our ceilings are only 8".  We didn't want it to make the room actually look smaller.  

I will post some more pictures once we get them in! 

@baldor1:  It is tough to wait, we bought the house and decided to live in it for a bit before changing out the flooring.  Well then it turned into wedding planning and we are just now getting the floors done!  We actually got just the right amount of cash as wedding presents to do the floors!  PERFECT!  

Definitely check out LL.  I think Lowes and HD although they carry the same product brands, I think sometimes the lines are inferior in order for them to pay for their overhead/advertising.  We looked at a lot of independent retailers as well that were really helpful.   It really just depends on where you can find something on sale.  I would try to never pay full price because it seems like it all goes drastically on sale at some point (big delivery, end of line, etc).  One independent retailer even lowered the price almost $1 per sq ft on one of their full price floors that we loved.  Don't be afraid to negotiate with these places!  

Here are the new baseboards that my husband is putting into today!  I am off on a business trip and he's home working