Flooring

Vinyl flooring is inexpensive and can be installed on your own.

If there is wood flooring or even plywood under the carpet, it can be sanded and painted or finished with urethane.

If you have a Habitat for Humanity Restore near you, they often have carpet pieces in various sizes. You can mix and match.

We got TrafficMaster Allure from home depot. It was inexpensive and super easy to put in...We've also used the Trafficmaster Ceramica tiles...and were reasonably impressed with those (particularly given the price). I agree with checking what's underneath...I've heard of people doing awesome things with concrete! You can try googling stuff too, maybe? I'm not all that creative or patient...some of these ideas sound really neat tho'! :)

What is your floor under the carpet like? Perhaps you could just take out the carpet.

You can get carpet at reasonable prices at carpet warehouses.

Personally I hate carpeting. It just gets too dirty underneath and no matter how much you clean it there is still a ton of dirt trapped beneath.

There are tons of inexpensive carpeting available check around and you may find something within your particular price point.

Also there are tons of vinyl flooring options that are affordable and beautiful. I am in the process of replacing some floors in my rental unit. I found some really affordable and beautiful options at Lowes. They even have a version that looks and feels like wood but truly isn't and it's not expensive at all.

Also note if you are going to put down the vinyl flooring get the extra adhesive. It really helps it to stick much better than what comes on the tile itself.

Use the money you do have to come up with options that fit your style and budget. Don't rule things out because you think you can't afford it. Look into it first and then see what you can afford and perhaps the gap between what you can afford and what you want doesn't exist or is just a small gap instead of the Grand Canyon.

Great success to you. I added a link for that vinyl wood floor from Lowes hope this helps:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_18920-61-A###-###-####_0__?produc...=

Look up brown paper flooring, I was blown away at how nice it turns out, and you cannot beat the price! I have read about it done in a bathroom, but I would see how it went putting it in a dry area first.

Laminate flooring is cheap, easy to install, and much nicer than carpet.

Hi! There are all kinds of cool, offbeat things you can do. Is there cement under the carpet? Clean it up and put a good finish on it. Add throw rugs. I'm trying to convince DH to put burlap bags down at my mother's. We can't rent it until we get the nasty rugs up. We ripped the rugs up here, sanded, painted, then put poly on top, I even did a colorful quilt pattern in the living room. I have a friend experimenting with paper grocery bags (that bowling alley poly is great!). She's crumpling for texture, spot staining the paper in like shades and gluing down. It kind of looks like leather. Think outside the box, it's your house you can do what you want! have fun---