Taken by the floors

By the time you get to 32, there are not a lot of 'firsts' left to try. I've had my first professional job, owned a car, has sex (sorry mom), and heck I've even eaten my first (and probably last) pig head. That said, this house building exercise has has been chalked full of more 'firsts' than I can count. Today was no exception. With Brendon away in Ottawa I convinced Roger to come with me to my first auction. We're now at the stage of the construction contract where shortly Smallworks will hand over the reigns to us and we'll be charging ahead with kitchen, bathroom and upstairs flooring installation. So slowly but surely we're trying to get prepared by purchasing all of the things we'll need.

One of the things we had to buy to be ready for this transition was flooring for the upstairs of the house. We had visited a few places in town to scope out prices and based our taste, we were looking at paying more than $12/square foot for engineered hardwood. Even for a small place, those kind of prices are ludicrous and quickly add up to thousands of dollars. I had heard that auctions were a good place to source items like flooring at a low price.  I contacted the google gods and low and behold an auction selling hardwood and engineered flooring would be taking place in our city Saturday December 4th. I did my due diligence and went to the showroom yesterday to evaluate the options. I asked as many questions as I could think of about the process and the product and anything I forgot to find out, I researched late last night to make sure I was ready. I felt like I was living the Girl Guides motto 'be prepared'.

Then the real auction started and everything I had practiced went down the drain - it was over before I knew it, I wasn't quite sure what happened and I felt a little victimized once the auctioneer yelled 'sold!'. Without me really knowing how it happened, we are now the proud owners of wide plank, smoked oak, hand scraped solid hardwood floors. I'm still trying to figure out what went down. I couldn't understand one word the auctioneer was saying and I never put up my hand to bid. Apparently though, I rustled my ballet which is enough to put in a bid and I shook that little piece of paper at just the right time to launch myself into the lead. Luckily, the flooring was Brendon's number one choice (it was my number two) so in the end we're thrilled about the purchase. Once I got to the till I found out just how much I had 'chosen' to pay - $3/square foot - by all accounts a good price.

The confusion quickly vanished and I left on a high with a couple of fliers stuffed into my purse advertising the bathroom and kitchen auction coming up next week. Stay tuned!