"If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor" - Neil Simon

So we're on a renovation streak, and we're shopping for new floors. Even though we live in a smaller city (i mean Newcastle is pretty big, but it's definitely not as big as Sydney) there's such a huge amount of stores selling flooring in Newcastle.

In our research, we ended up comparing prices on the Newcastle Carpet one website. We've spent (invested?!) quite a lot on the house lately, so we wanted to stay within budget. Hubby and I typically plan out budgets for everything we do, but when it comes to the house we have a habit of blowing the budget out... Oops!

In this instance though we were extra focused on staying within the allocated budget, including installation. One bonus is that we found out there's a bunch of warranties for carpet from Carpet One which makes the pricing even more attractive.

Sustainability is important for us, so we've been looking at sustainable flooring options. Bamboo floors look like the way we're going go, and I've been looking at how they're made. The process is truly amazing, and it does make you feel warm and fuzzy knowing that they're sustainable and sourced responsibly.

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Hubby is more into engineered timber floors, as he gets the look that he's after of the more traditional style hardwood-timber, but much more affordable (within our budget! hehe) and significantly less costly to install. As the flooring consultant I spoke to mentioned to me "it's the total installed price that counts" which is 100% correct. My advice is figuring out the installation cost before committing to anything!

We're still in the research process, but I expect we'll have some nice looking new floors in our home by mid 2017!