I'm very familiar with this situation as I was the factory rep for Mohawk. The carpet 'dept' is merely a franchise dept within the store. There is no economy of scale when buying carpet as the store is going to have to order a special order for each and every customer that walks in. The savings may be there but not of any significant difference than shopping around. The dept used to be run by Custom Decorators that had an office in Portland then started franchising into other retailers. The short answer is no big savings. Shaw and Moahwk are the two biggest companies in floor covering and both make a range of products from crap to extremely high end. Your question is like is a Ford good? Sort of depends if your talking about an Escort or a Lincoln

We installed this flooring in our bedroom 2 years ago. Floating application and have had no problems with scratching, etc. Liked it so much that we replaced the carpeting in the hallway with bamboo 16 months ago. We enter the house thru the garage & laundry room, so 90% of our traffic walks down the hall. Have several family gatherings a year (20+ peeps) and had one family reunion in our home (60+ peeps). Everyone walks virtually the entire length of the hall to the bathroom and closer family members also walk thru the master bedroom to the master bath. Living in Michigan our temperatures and humidity levels have a large variance; January averages - Temperature high 31, low 19. Humidity 60-80% August averages - Temperature high 80, low 62. Humidity 90-50% Keep in mind it is not uncommon for the temp to hit mid-90's or below zero. We also have 3 dogs (weights between 12-16 lbs) that love to run up and down the hall playing fetch. They do show fingerprints/footprints. Especially when wearing croc flipflops, you can see the texture of the bottom of the flipflops across the floor. Tried to get my hubby to wear real slippers instead, but just got used to it. Super fast to wipe down tho and I don't notice black in between the grooves that one reviewer mentioned. We are interested in reviews from people who have installed this bamboo in their kitchen. Currently we have a wood laminate product which has water damage by the sink and in front of the fridge water/ice dispenser. Waterproof Vinyl planking seems to buckle in sunlight, hubby doesn't want tile, I don't want wood due to water damage. So now we are considering adding more bamboo and are seeking information from people who have installed the bamboo in "wet" areas.

Allwood is made in china with carrb 2 compliance and assembled in florida. All wood has a lot of indpendent dealers that sell it also. Costco sells it a good margin that makes it profitable for a local dealer to match their price. It drives me nuts their wall cabinets are made for top mount crown molding. It is much more difficult to install when the the molding is supposed to touch the ceiling. There is not space to float it for the high's and lows of the ceiling. I have an account with them and 6 Square but do not like to promote them. Their quality is not near as good as 6 square and as mentioned 6 square has many more cabinet sizes. I have decided as a independent store owner to not sell 6 square either as they do not have all the sizes you need and people just get confused that you can not get every color in every door style. I have all my sample mounted on walls in a selection like room and am constantly saying to people well this you can get in any color this you can not. This you can get some etc. It becomes a pain to teach everyone the differences between all the companies. I have a kitchen I am finishing up that has been on hold to install for a year. In that time all wood has decided to charge extra for finished ends and now adds a 1/4" panel on the side in florida and calls it flush. One cabinet we ordered after the original set was ordered has this factory applied finished end and it is a terrible job. I would have thought someone physically handicapped would have put it on. If you are looking for value I do not think they offer it. The box construction is good but everything else is a pain in my opinion. 6 square and allwood prices are fairly similar. The raised panel cherry door style from 6 square has been more expensive on quotes I have done then going with a custom company I work with. If you are looking for a better price go with standard overlay cabinets with plywood construction and the price will be better then what you are paying for in 6 square and all wood. To me it is better to have all the available sizes of a good semi custom company then mess around with a constrained line that has limited sku's and limited styles and colors. That is just my 2 cents.... If you really want a low price and a nice look River Run is a good choice.If you are in the North East Wolf is another brand that can be less expensive. Fabuwood has a lower price if you find someone who will sell them unassembled at a low mark up. The increase in price to All wood and 6 Square is not worth it over a larger portfolio of semi custom. I have worked with a lot of cabinet companies in the last few years looking for the silver bullet in cost to only decide price is so relative you can not have the best price on every product every time and you just chase your tail. I personally have concluded what works for me...... I was pricing a kitchen out the other day that got me chasing an account with conestoga RTA which turned out to not be a good price to me as a dealer. Entry level products: Wolf Classic and River Run had dealer cost of about 2.5k 6 Square and All wood would classify as stock line here between entry level and semi but the price would be closer to the semi custom price. I would expect it to be 3. something k Semi custom products: Brandom had a dealer cost of about 3.9k my semi custom company even though I do not care for a lot of their colors... go figure I stick with them because the price is good and they turn out fairly consistent products from one delivery to the next. I signed up with Wellborn Forest last fall for example as I like thier colors and door styles better but have decided to forget them. Many of my orders have not shipped complete things are missing on the truck when the paper work states it should be there for example. They also have a very short build time which in theory is nice but in the real world their quality control is lacking to be polite to say the least. Custom Products Touchstone Custom was 4.3k All wood and 6 square would have been close to the 3.9 k price but not had near the options that Brandom has. The book for all wood is approx 30 pages long. 6 square is closer to 100 with half of those being spread sheets for pricing. Brandom is approx 400 pages long and geppetto is over 800 pages long. It is not worth the hassle of never having the one thing you need in the design to personalize it per say. Conestoga RTA would not even give me a price that would match my Touchstone custom price which got me frustrated truth be told. As a dealer you do not know where the price of everything is just like you do not as the end user. Being a dealer is more difficult because you can not get access to the pricing and really decide what will work till after you sign up with them to make a go at it. Anyways I am not convinced I got a good price on Conestoga RTA but I have no way of knowing other then it does not match up to what companies pricing I already have. A Side note for all the Gw'rs on here that are conestoga RTA fans. Point being is that All wood and 6 Square have prices close to semi custom companies with not the options to really brag about. Price is always relative as one day I am the best deal people can find that I meet and other days my same prices with the same mark ups are not as good as alternatives in my area. The longer I have been in the kitchen business the more I have decided the constrained cabinet lines are more of a pain then a blessing for the dealer or the end user with a few exceptions.

Baby update: Baby was indeed born just after midnight on Dec. 4. Those cramps? Right-from 3 cm to delivery in 40 minutes. The photo is Julia 3 days old. That sleeper is 0-3 months and she's swimming in it! I'm still up here at my daughter's doing the grandma thing. She is so sweet! Looks a lot like her brother at that age. Dog bed: I just read the article onedoggie linked. Years ago, our waterbed heater died about 2 weeks before a scheduled vacation, so we put off changing it out until we had the time. We put sleeping bags on top of the covers. Guess what? Our warm bodies, plus bedding, met the cold water in the bed and grew mold on the mattress pad next to the bag of water. I'm really allergic to mold. We actually discovered the problem after I had a major asthma attack, which answered the question of what set me off. So maybe that is exactly what is going on here: warm dog, cold bamboo = condensation. Weird. It never happened with the dog beds that had cedar in them. barbarany - we bought the rug at Costco online last year. They still have lots of rugs, but not that particular one. As I mentioned on the home decor thread, we really like it, but be warned that it shed like mad for months. I guess that's normal for a wool rug, but I was surprised.