Unfortunately only you can decide if you hate it $8500 worth. Personally, it's not to my taste. I'm not a fan of high variation between planks, but that is a whole lot of money when you probably are already feeling the financial burn of a new build. I do think adding a lot of big rugs in the living spaces will help, but it's not going to make it go away. It'll be more difficult in the future once you've moved in and have all your furniture in place to replace it.

@Mark Bischak, Architect do you know where i cab get references for ”quieting” a busy floor with big rugs and furniture?

im thinking it might be cheaper for now as i have small children, abd once they are a bit older I can get nicer flooring in

$8500 is really not that much in the grand scheme of a new house. I paid many times this and went through hell with my previous floor which ultimately had to be ripped out. I would take it out. Budget also for removing and replacing baseboards along walls and cabinet trim and paint touch ups. I would just do it and be done with it before you move in. You could ask the contractor who installed it if he could be the one to remove it since he is already familiar with the house. Maybe he will also give you a deal on install of the new floor.

@jemimabean I am waiting on more estimates before deciding.

and I will also do some research on rugs and decor to make it less extreme.

it is heartbreaking, the floor plan and upstairs finishings are perfect and exactly what I wanted, so im trying to get some excitement back by focusing on the positive.

How long do you anticipate living in this house?

I think you'll regret replacing it. With the flooring run underneath the cabinetry, removing it will be a big mess, and cause damage to your brand new house.

Besides, I think this faux-hardwood vinyl flooring fad will be horribly outdated within the next decade, so save your money and replace it with something else several years from now.

@booty bums: this is supposed to be our ”forever home” so unless we decide to move to different province, we will be living here for a long time

I don't think you're ever going to love that if you don't love it now. That is certainly a polarizing floor. Only you and yours can decide what costs are most worth it when. If you think you'll want different floors soonish when your kids are older (how much older do they need to be?) it might be worth it to you to wait and save for the better floors. If you're going to cursethe floors everytime you walk into the first floor, it might be worth changing now, but you have to weigh your financial situation against those factors.

If you keep them, pick your furniture and rugs to not clash with these floors, but make sure they won't clash with what you really want (unless it's cheap rugs that will be picked up or replaced when a) kids/pets destroy them b) you getthe new floors. If it's a furnishing that will be replaced before the floor will anyways, then pick for these floors.

Good news is floors are replaceable. The floor plan and location are the most important things about your new home to love, as those are what they are (or at least aren't readily changed). You will be able to love this house, and once you've got this all settled (whenever that may be), you'll be able to laugh about this whole thing. Have some fun decorating and organizing your new home, or at least the upstairs if you're still deciding on the first floor floors.

Good quality room sized rugs are also expensive and you will have to pick bland plain colored ones, or your house will be a a visual chaos of stripes on the floor and whatever pattern is on the rugs.

If it were to be removed carefully, you could recover some of the cost by selling it. The contractor won't be careful though, unless they plan on using it themselves somewhere else.

I have a ten year rule on these kinds of mistakes. It’s perfectly functional, so leave it for 10 years and then get exactly what you want. I’m rapidly approaching 10 years with some track lighting that I hate, but I am glad that I waited because now everything can be LED.

It's quite unattractive and I could not live with it. But I would never have chosen LVP to begin with. Sheet vinyl, Marmoleum or LVT is preferred in my mind.

But that's not the issue. The issue is should you replace it now or later. If now, it will be a big mess and costly. Are you financing the home? If so, then you'll be rolling the cost into your mortgage and it probably won't add that much more to your monthly payments. And you'll forget about it once you get a floor that you like. On the other hand, if you wait a few years, you still will have a big mess, and will have to move all your furniture out to replace it and probably will have to move out while they work (more disruption).

Replacing it with another version of the same flooring doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. Then you're spending more $$$ to get nowhere. You need to decide 1) if you want to spend the money to replace it, and 2) what your options are for alternative flooring--engineered wood? cork? LVT? etc.

Just use the axiom, "The more rug you see, the less floor you see"

this is supposed to be our ”forever home” so unless we decide to move to different province, we will be living here for a long time

I would live with it until you are ready/able to replace it with something other than imitation hardwood vinyl.

If you replace it with a different color now, I think you will look at it in 10 years and find it to be a dated fad and want to replace it a second time.

Take the $8.5K, invest it in an S&P 500 index fund, they pay cash for a better flooring option in 10 years.

Don't be too hard on yourself. It happens. I recently put LVT on one floor of my house. Loved the look on the floor, but it looked hidieous on the stairs. Particulary because it clashed slightly with the tile floor at bottom of stairs but also because the LVT trim for the stairs looked cheap. So I bit the bullet and replaced it with a really nice carpet that went with both the floors upstairs and the floors downstairs. It was hard to decide to eat the cost, but I knew it would drive me nuts.

I know this is no consolation, but I would hate it too. I’d bite the bullet and replace it now because I know I’d never like it. Life is short.

@Diana Bier Interiors, LLC the cost of replacing it would have to come out of pocket as we already closed on the house and the funds have been released.

Ok, that is an important consideration. If that were me, and my only choice was another LVP, I might do wall-to-wall seagrass.

Amy Mitchell did w-to-w seagrass here:

The Ultimate She-Shed · More Info

Guest Room · More Info

Bayshores · More Info

Fireplace · More Info

It's a natural product and looks very nice and neutral--a great backdrop for furniture and decor!

Life’s too short to live with ugly if you can do anything to change it.

change it now while it is easier, you made a costly mistake but no use trying to live with it..

Is this a floating floor? If so, you should get a discount because the manufacturers directions surely state not to install cabinets on top of flooring. Could cause buckling of the floor.

We had a similar situation in a beach house (I'll go on the record saying I never liked the choice but was overruled by my mother in law, ha ha). Over time, we certainly got used to it and judicious use of rugs helped quite a bit. Good decisions made after the floor helped - we picked very calm and quiet countertops, cabinets, furnishings, etc.

I would rather risk a few bumps and bruises to other surfaces (which will happen eventually anyway) than live with a huge design element I hate. You won’t regret your new ffloor, but will regret this one many times every single day. If you amortize the replacement cost over the years you’d have to live with this one, it’s not that much per year to replace it. Covering it with rugs is just throwing good money after bad.

You must have liked something about it   I'd live with it and put simple furnishings with it  one thing  about it won't show dirt with kids and animals

Can you degloss/deglaze it and then use a floor paint? Even just a whitewash to tone it down? (Edit: if you're gonna rip it up anyway, it can't hurt to try and then rip it up if it's still horrible to you.)

Area rugs. ........ and the right decor, it could be stunning.

If this was me... I would just move on with my life and work with it. Area rugs are great.

I have them over beautiful wood floors and most of the floor is covered by the area rug :-)

@LH CO/FL i didnt know you could do that with LVP, I will look into it. thanks

I went through this 8 years ago when we did a major remodel. We were shocked when the hardwood floor shipment arrived since it did not look like the sample board. We should have stopped right then and not proceeded. Unfortunately, we were at the end of my DH's cancer treatment and with this priority we were not thinking clearly. A wild floor is visually disrupting and very difficult to decorate around and allows for limited rug choices. I highly recommend doing something now rather than be unhappy with it every day. Go to some rug sites like rugsusa.com, upload several rooms and see if area rugs can work for you. Rugs can help, a little. Most importantly, you have to be comfortable with your decision of whether you can or want to live with it. I wish I had ripped mine up immediately. At some point, we will sand and stain. If you go the paint route, it may be a short-term solution, but will wear and require maintenance. With a brand new home I would not settle unless you financially have to.

Here is my sample

and what I got

Wow @bbtrix that is terrible--it looks NOTHING like the sample.

@Diana Bier Interiors, LLC No, not even close. We were so out of our minds at the time it never occurred to me to call the lumber yard where we ordered it. Several years later, we had our sales rep from the same store come out to do estimates for another project. We told him about the floor and he said they absolutely would have made good on it. Lesson learned for me is not to do things in haste and not live with what I do not like. Life is too short. It's really hard to not "see" a wild floor, even with rugs.

Yes, that is a different floor you got.

If you can find the money, change it.

@bbtrix thank you for sharing your perspective, you know exactly how it is to live with a busy floor you dont like! i really appreciate it

"Life’s too short to live with ugly if you can do anything to change it."

Sounds like marriage counseling from the stool side of the bar.

If you do change it, keep the dog.

@Mark Bischak, Architect haha

@Mark Bischak, Architect If you do change it, keep the dog. Ha! The dog's a keeper and vastly improves the view! Sounds like marriage counseling from the stool side of the bar. That's exactly why he has not sanded and stained it as of yet. He's waiting for more dog scratches and closer to when we put it on the market which is several years off. And he dislikes it more than I!

Ugh so sorry I would replace it, but not with LVP.

I’m so sorry. :( I also would replace it — it will drive you crazy all the time. And for all you haters — I’ve lived with beautiful engineered hardwood, beautiful-after-restoration Saltillo tiles, and bog standard LVP that replaced truly horrendous wall-to-wall carpeting. I see nothing wrong with LVP as a product and would use it again.

I saw your comment about having small children. My two cents- When we moved into our new home, it had a blonde colored (like maple?) laminate. I hate it. I'm a real hardwood sort of girl- and I prefer a slightly busy hickory. So not my cup of tea. But you know what, we had young kids too- and cats. And no more money to replace all the floors. So we decided to live with it and bought a big carpet to cover the living area. (You can go to carpet stores and have a custom sized carpet cut with the ends finished which is a bit cheaper than buying enormous rugs).

I've now lived with that stupid laminate for 10 years. There's been paint spills and cat puke, and dog accidents (they joined the family later), and scuffs and I just don't care because these floors are NOT precious to me. I still don't like the floors- but when we recently remodeled to add a wing to the house, we didn't bother to replace them - it still didn't feel worth the money. Instead, I spent the money on finally replacing our sofas (now that I don't have to worry about kids destroying furniture).

Long story short- don't feel too bad if you feel like 8.5k is too much right now and end up having to live with it. Either you'll discover it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and will be grateful you don't like the floors every time red kool-aid is spilt, or you will have the chance to know in your heart of hearts that you really and truly can't stand those floors - which means it will be worth every penny and the hassle to replace it with no regrets.

It's not just that it's ugly, but also that it's super-bossy -- will determine every choice you make with all other decor. Plus, if you go Mark's route and get huge area rugs for everyplace you can, you'll be at $5k before you even blink! Bite the bullet now and save yourself a decade of gritting your teeth.

^^^So true. Thats a good way to put it. And it will be a real pain to replace it once living there. It’s unfortunate they installed it under the cabinets. They should not have.

If you hate it and can afford to replace it, then bite the bullet and do it now. Why wait? It'll never be cheaper to replace than today's price. Enjoy your floor now.

Tomorrow is not promised.

Live with it for now. You will either realize it is not a big deal and stop noticing it, or decide to change it later. I loved the comments about not feeling bad if things get spilled on your floor since you do not feel your floor is precious. If you replace the floor, what if you do not like that once it is installed? Would you not buy a home if it had the floor your home does? It gives you something to focus on. You may notice more details you wish you were different over time. Enjoy your new home. Is it better than what you moved from? Enjoy the pluses.

Isn't the undercabinet issues just a knife and a hard pull? I don't see why that is considered a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It isn't like dealing with hard wood or tile under cabinets.

And whether they should do that or not is a matter of opinion - although with LVP it does seem like not doing it that way makes sense. But a lot easier to just put it down before cabinets and not that big of a deal to change out after the fact.

As far as the comment about spilling something on a floor - do you really think you can hurt LVP? Certainly not with a spill...

If it actually goes under the cabinets, it voids the manufacturers warranty and will eventually buckle and fail. It will do it faster if there also isn’t enough expansion space left at the walls.

That failure will then be on the builder to replace it all. If you can wait untill warm summer weather and humidity makes the failure happen, you will get your change of flooring at no cost. But you’ll have to endure the hassle of it being replaced after being moved in.

Or you can try pointing out the incorrect installation now, and the inevitable future consequences, and offer to pay half of the quoted cost for it to be removed and replaced now, as a future warranty claim removal for him. And write him that exclusion of warranty for the new floors.

Does vinyl really expand that much? I mean I realize that it is meant to have expansion. But really, even laminate doesn't expland that much. And do we really think plastic expands enough to be a problem in a climate controlled house?

Warm summer weather and humidity sure can be uncomfortable. But very few house interiors actually experience it. And humidity might make wood swell - but do you think vinyl cares that much. Heat of course makes everything swell but the variance between winter and summer is probably less than 10 degrees for most people.

I lived in Mixed humid and humidity inside is usually between 45% and 52% anyway. Let's break out the micrometer and check my vinyl ruler....

I would not bet on failure this summer and neither will the builder. Somehow, I expect this isn't the first house that he has built with vinyl planks under cabinets.

I think you should rip it out, I don’t think I would live with the wild variation. I think I would try and go after the contractor for not showing you the variation up front . It’s not suppose to be a buyer beware.
It’s a pretty big job to pull it all out, I would do it before I would move in.

There not even the same thing