New Flooring

There are so many choices when it comes to hardwood flooring.  The first, for us, was an easy one - solid hardwood over engineered and chose white oak.  We made an early decision to keep fixtures true to the age and period of the home.  We are doing our best to restore the original architectural details to the house after so many were lost, so solid hardwood flooring was a must.

 

Here's the before.  The flooring really wasn't that bad, but ended up replacing the entire main floor flooring, which you can read about here. 

 

 

 

You can always learn a thing or two from friends, right?  While we had a friend install beautiful hardwood flooring in their home, it was very time consuming.  Given our tighter timeline (Audrey and I were at my mom's house waiting to move in and J was heading back to a new job), we had it professionally installed.  We chose to go with Darmaga Flooring not only because of their excellent online reviews, but on the recommendation of three people who have used their services, including my parents!  Their hardwood floors were installed over 10 years ago and still look stunning.  The devil is in the details and the nosing and transitions look fantastic. 

 When choosing a hardwood floor, I recommend you think about the use it's going to get and your family.  From my research, there are three main finishes you can go with - lacquered, wire brushed, and hand scraped.  These vary from a shiny finish to an almost raw, rough looking finish.  We have a young family, a dog, and two cats so a lacquered finish wasn't for us.  The hand scraped as a little too rustic looking wasn't for us, we wanted something a bit more traditional to go with the age and style of our home.  So wire brushed it is!

 

Here's a view from the same spot in the family room, first looking into the hallway and second, into the dining room.

 

The only area on the main floor that isn't hardwood is the small area at the front door.  Our side and back entryways are a little tight so I knew we'd be coming in and out of this door with groceries, babies, and anything else that is big and heavy.  Add wet and dirty shoes and you have the killer of hardwood floor.  Enter ceramic tile.  It was best for us, given that it will stand up to the test of time better than other tile options.

 

I have a thing for subway tiles but traditional subway tiles were too small for the area.  I went with an oversized tile measuring 12"x24" is a very soft taupe.

 

 

Our new flooring is beautiful!  We are so pleased with how everything looks, especially the touches that we knew we couldn't do on our own, like the transitions.  We still need to get to work on the staircase.  Stripping and sanding it down to paint and stain it, but things were starting to come together.