You're not wrong. But if you're going to do it, it should be real hardwood, not laminate. But that's JMO.
I agree with mc mark. Don't do laminate, do real hard woods. That is where you will get your real value. Just remember that if you try to hard wood upstairs, you have to have a different subflooring than with carpet for it to be right. That can get costly, much more costly than just the wood, floating, glue, etc. We are going to hardwood the entire bottomfloor except for wet areas and it is going to be not cheap even though we are getting a hook up for wood through my GF's work ($3.50 a sq foot for 5 inch hand scraped hickory). It's going to be pimp!
Daymn! That's an excellent price! We've been wanting to put wide plank hard wood in our country home but the cheapest we can find is around $8.50 a sq foot. So to do a 1200 sf house (relatively small) would be around 11 grand just for the lumber. Does your girlfriend's company ship?
Ha, don't you wish This stuff retails for over $18 per sq foot but it is a discontinued item and since she is an employee, we get it at their cost. We also are getting a Level 4 granite through her company and for the entire kitchen it's going to be about $3k That includes two undermount sinks as well, one for the kitchen sink and one bar sink.
bastid! Yeah, everything that we really love almost always comes in around $15 to $18 a sq foot. We've been watching this website http://www.wideplankflooring.com/index.aspx they sometimes have remnant sales.
One last thought on the fireplace: Because of the manufactured desirability of fireplaces, houses on the market for you to buy that don't have one will be cheaper than houses with one, all else being equal. So, even if you can fetch a higher price and sell the property more quickly 10 years from now, you can get a better house for the same money right now, if you forego the fireplace. It can be a lever in negotiation.
