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$8 to $18 per square foot
Skill Level: Very easy
A bit like piecing together a puzzle with basic tools, except there’s lots of kneeling and getting up and down.
It's hard to imagine a house being cozy without the warmth of wood flooring. The quickest way to get new wood underfoot is to install a floating floor. Unlike traditional solid-wood strips, a floating floor isn’t nailed down. Instead, the planks are either glued or snapped together. The planks go down fast, over virtually any material—concrete, plywood, sheet vinyl, even ceramic tile.
There are several floating floor materials available, but if you want real wood, the best choice is engineered flooring. This sandwich of wood veneer glued to layers of pine or plywood looks like solid wood and is very stable. Although engineered flooring's thin veneer can't be sanded as many times as solid wood can, its thick factory-applied coating is more durable than one applied in your home on solid wood, and it will be ready for furniture in just one day.
