My husband and I are currently in the midst of getting new flooring installed in our home. We bought a home which is around 30 years old and some of the carpets were still the original ones from when the home was first built. Needless to say it was time for a change.
We decided to install vinyl flooring in our kitchen, laundry room and dining room. We saved quite a bit of money by doing the majority of the prep work ourselves. This involved pulling the two old layers of linoleum off of the subfloor and then scraping the remnants along with the adhesive off of the plywood subfloor. This was not a pleasant experience, but we saved ourselves about $50 per hour by not paying someone else to do it.
When it came time to install the vinyl, we hired a local professional to take care of it. We were very happy with the results and we are planning on hiring him again to do the rest of the upstairs.