We have been renovating our 3rd floor attic space to create two rooms that I can use for a studio space. The space was already converted into two rooms when we purchased the house, and we painted the rooms as soon as we moved in. However, I was tired of the carpet. And with a flooring change, you always end up changing the paint and a few other things (like light fixtures, closet doors, door knobs….yep, I knew that was all gonna change too!), but I’ll save that for another time.

We knew, overall, whatever we did with this space needed to be light and airy as each room only has one window. I also wanted it to be a highly usable space for someone else when we eventually sell the house. I foresee these rooms being great kids bedrooms, playrooms, a home office, or another creative space.

When you create as much as I do, you need a space that has wipe-able floors. We wanted to simply paint and roughly finish the existing hardwood floors, but upon pulling up the carpeting, we revealed a huge chunk of floor missing down the center of each room. Someone did this at some point to spray insulation. While insulation is a great thing, we wish they wouldn’t have ripped up so much floor! Oh well….

We also discovered the floors were covered in paint and drywall mud. While sanding them was an option, finding all the replacement wood was going to take us forever and may have been close to impossible to find an exact match.

So, we opted to cover the floors in the Pergo brand of laminate flooring in the finish “Costal Pine”. I fell in love with it the second I saw it online. It is very similar to the “unfinished” painted wood look I was wanting. After watching several YouTube videos (and having lots of flooring experience from this house and previous home renovations), my husband and I set to work.

Installing the flooring was fairly simple AFTER the first couple of rows. The first couple of rows are a little more difficult because you are trying to find your “flow” of working. But, once you “get into the groove”, it’s quite simple. It can also get tricky when you are trying to cut pieces to fit around the doorways and closet. We recommend taking lots of measurements and using caulk to fill in any gaps when needed.

For anyone considering laying their own flooring (Pergo or a similar brand), I definitely recommend doing it. I think having two people working on it, makes it even more simple. It’s definitely a two weekend project IF you have to remove an existing floor before laying the new floor. Definitely watch some videos on YouTube to educate yourself on the entire process. We ordered the tools (the ones you need to help lock the floor in place) on Amazon. They were much cheaper than buying the name brand tools. They worked perfectly.

Luckily we had a neighborhood junk pickup day that enabled us to dispose of the carpet at no charge. If you don’t have this as an option, you can get mini-dumpsters at place like Home Depot. You fill it with debris and the cost of the dumpster includes a haul-away.

Check out our photos from the first of the two rooms below.

More of our DIY’s can be found on our YouTube channel, “Carolyn Braden”.

If you have any questions for us, visit our Contact Us page and send us a note! We love helping other DIYer’s out there!