When we originally bought this house, the floors were one of the first projects that we wanted to tackle and we knew it would be quite a project. The carpet was worn and definitely showing it’s age, and the tiles in the entry were green and dated. We decided to take on the house floor by floor, and start with the main floor first since we had barely moved in, and wouldn’t have to worry about moving too much furniture. We ended up doing all of the demo ourselves to make the budget stretch farther, and M somehow tore up ALL of the carpet in one day, and all that was left between us and our new floors was this entry tile.
Unlike the carpet, the tile demo was not quite as quick or smooth of a process. After learning all about how much of a pain in the butt tile demo can be from our last house, M was hesitant to take this on ourselves, fearing that we might damage the subfloor or do more harm than good.
Then one day Kuma our puppy and I were bored decided to be risk takers and took matters into our own hands 🙂
Now here’s where you should not take marriage advice from me – Do you want to know the fastest way to get your husband to start a project? Go grab a hammer and a pry bar and start a huge demo project by yourself… while you’re pregnant 😉
I’ve never seen him jump off that couch so fast to find out what in the world I was doing and immediately take over.
Like I said, I would not try this one at home, but I love you honey haha!
It ended up being just as messy, if not messier and more dusty than we both thought, but luckily no damage was done to the floors! Once all of the dust had settled and everything has hauled to the trash, we were left with a blank slate. It made me so happy I wanted to do backflips throughout the house! Then I remembered I am a failed cheerleader and settled for somersaults instead. Kidding, I’m not even sure I’m coordinated enough to do those, especially while pregnant 😛
We also removed all of the trim work so we could put new base trim in easier, and could avoid having to add any quarter round trim.
Now that all the demo was done, it was time to get shopping! I think we visited roughly a dozen different flooring stores looking at all different styles, materials, colors and brands comparing our options. Maybe one day I’ll do a post on everything that we learned along the way, but all we knew going into it at first was that we wanted a medium toned floor that was durable enough to withstand animals and babies, and it would be a bonus if it could be sanded down at some point and refinished if needed.
After weighing all of the options, we decided on a 3/4″ solid hardwood, and were deciding between the last three in the photos above. I loved how they were on the skinnier side to resemble older hardwood floors, but had the texture of a more rustic option and would hide any scratches or dents.
Do you see how light the one floor looks compared to the other two in the store? Well, if the store lets you bring samples home, Always. Take. Them. Home. The lighting is so incredibly different from place to place! Spoiler alert, we went with the lighter looking one, and had we trusted the lighting in the store, we would have ended up with floors that were far darker than what we wanted.
Here’s what they looked like when getting installed!
Can you even believe those are the same floors as the sample photo? Again, always always always bring them home 🙂 It took the team about a week to get everything installed throughout the first floor and we’re so incredibly happy with how they turned out! I love how they now stretch from room to room instead of being broken up by tile, and it makes the space flow so much nicer. We rarely use our front door so we weren’t worried about the weather wreaking havoc on the floors, and so far they’ve held up amazingly great!
After the floors went in, this house finally started to feel more like us, and we started to see the light at the end of the tunnel between the kitchen and flooring projects! Next was the fun part, the furnishing and decorating each space, and we’ll share more on that progress soon! 🙂
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