Our house: The floors

The Mister and I moved into our house Valentine's Day 2009. When we moved in, the house was in great condition, but I didn't really like a lot of the decor. For example, the kitchen cabinets. They are super nice, but they aren't something I would choose. The walls were painted with stencils. Like all over. They were really well done, but not my style. The carpet was the same way: great condition, super clean but just not what I wanted.

See the stencils around the window? See the carpet- it's nice right?

If I had my way, we would have gotten rid of it before we moved in, but The Mister is much more level headed then me, and he said "there's nothing wrong with it." Enter: Gus, our 75 pound lab. Now see what Gus does to the carpet when he's home alone?

These are three of the worst spots, but he has ruined several spots in the living room, hallway and in our bedroom. So we decided that it was time to replace it. We wanted hardwood floors, but our budget said that wouldn't work, so we started to look into laminate flooring. We went to Home Depot and picked up several little samples to see how they looked in the house. We laid them out and to get a nice visual. Then in our head we picked our favorite, and the one we disliked the most, without telling each other. Our next step was to take out the ones we liked the least. My heart broke a little when I watched him grab my favorite. The Mister was also unhappy that I took out his favorite. The Mister wanted the lightest colored floor, and I loved the darker, richer tones. We were stuck. So we took the samples to a few different people, and still we couldn't decide.

Fast forward 3 or 4 months to this weekend. The Mister and I had heard that Costco had flooring and we happen to be in Costco, so we walked over from the ice cream sandwiches and frozen cookie dough and over to the boring other side of the store, and looked at their selection. Two very great things happened: it was on sale (yay!) and they only had 3 color choices. Decisions are much easier when you only have a couple things to pick from. We settled on a color and came home with this:

Now we just have to schedule some time with my brother to get these bad boys installed.

Do you and your significant other have different styles? How do you make decisions?