I put in 5mm vinyl click plank from LL in a stone pattern in my kitchen. the thickness does make it a bit tougher to cut so any advantage that the thickness has in making it lock together is balanced by it being harder to make cuts (assuming score and break with a blade and not power tools). Overall, it does take a bit of time and patience to get it installed well. In my installation, seams are all very tight with no signs of any separation after 8 months, despite all this ridiculous cold weather no doubt causing more contraction than what I would normally ever see. Mine is on concrete slab so I don't have experience with it on wood subfloor. Overall, I am happy with it. Note that the surface wear layer will scratch. You should still put protective pads on furniture, etc. It is much more resistant to gouging from dropping heavy stuff on it unlike the cheap sheet vinyl I've had in the past (and worlds better in this regard then laminate and wood). These characteristics may not carry over to all the other 5mm. LL private labels from multiple manufacturers, even stuff they label as being in the same series. In getting stone style click vinyl samples, I noted that they came from at least two different manufacturers. When I've looked at their laminate samples, I've found at least four different manufacturers (and again at least two were supposed to be the just different patterns in the same exact series), some were clearly better quality than others despite being the same price.

Thanks, Looks like HD wins in this case due to the free pad upgrade then. No reason to hate big box stores, they sell inexpensively and do just fine in my experience. The"real" flooring stores can't compete and usually come in about double in cost. Though I just did spend $15K in wood flooring in a "real" store only because the big box guys couldn't get the product we wanted. If I were just a little more patient and willing to hire subs, I'd buy my own materials online and hire an installer myself and cut out all the middlemen and taxes.

The fencing from HD and Lowes is thinner than what many fence companies use (but not all). Recently was looking at some HD/Lowes fencing and you really do have to call the manufacturer to find out thickness, AND you have to ask the same questions of the fence companies. For example, one HD/Lowes style of 6' privacy fencing I was looking at (manufactured in the USA by Barrette) had 0.035" thick pickets, 0.065" rails and 0.135" thick posts, while the fence companies vinyl had 0.050" pickets, 0.080" rails and 0.150" thick posts. So as you can see there is a definite material difference. However just having thinner material doesn't mean HD/Lowes fence product isn't any good, just that it probably won't be as strong. But the real important question is how strong do you need, and would 0.035" pickets be strong enough? Answers to questions like this seem scarce on the internet, so all you find are fence companies saying they use thicker material that will be stronger, but again, maybe I don't care if what HD/Lowes has is already good enough, especially given the cost savings. Obviously we don't want pickets bowing and blowing off the rails b/c of a 30 mph wind gust, so they do need some strength. From what I've found reading reviews on HD/Lowes, is their fencing seems to hold up just fine, in fact one reviewer said their fence held up perfectly against hurricane Sandy this last year, and another reviewer in Arizona (where they have very high winds) also has had no issue with pickets blowing off in the wind. The other issue about vinyl falling apart after 5 or 10 years did used to be true, based on my internet searches, but apparently that was vinyl fencing made without UV inhibitors (TiO2) and impact modifiers, so it got brittle, flaked, turned yellow, fell down when hit by a weed whacker, etc, but no one (except maybe imported stuff) uses that anymore. The other big thing is to avoid any fencing that requires brackets to hold it together, make sure you buy the kind with holes in the posts for the rails, and make sure you get tongue and groove pickets with u-channels (some styles at HD/Lowes have both, but others don't, so review their listings very carefully). I guess my conclusion would be if you buy the right type of fence from HD/Lowes, you will probably do just fine and save quite a bit of money (though you don't want to have them do the install b/c they'll nail you on that)!

Lowes installed my doors. What a cluster of catastrophes, It started with their crew coming out to measure. Then they came back with the windows and doors that THEY measured and the doors were so much smaller than the openings that they looked ridiculous. The doors were Pella wood sliders, very nice, but too small for the openings. I begged them to make the doors bigger, not smaller, but they said they could not. Then they could not find trim to fit the doors, so they left the last trim they bought in my yard to be rained on. As they were preparing to leave, I asked what they were doing with the trim and they told me I had purchased it and I could do whatever I wanted. This was their 6th try at installing said trim, so they never came back. I called and went to the store in Simpsonville, SC every day for weeks. I contacted the CEO of Lowes (not the current one) and he told me Blaine (the fellow in charge of my special order at the store) told them that I had ordered smaller doors to save money! first of all, I begged to make the doors bigger and the larger doors were less money because they were standard size. Now fast forward a few years and the largest set of doors will not even open at all! I had Pella out to my home and they said the doors were installed wrong from the beginning and that they need to take the whole thing out and reinstall. When the doors were first completed I was told that they only needed to be adjusted and I was doing it wrong. Can I sue lowes? Really angry!