Our Home on the Lane: Floor It!

Finally, after 2 1/2 weeks of sheetrocking, taping and mudding, we've moved on to the next phase of the house. The hardwood floor is in! Woohoo! The flooring was delivered last Friday, then had to acclimate for a few days before it could be installed. So we looked longingly at this pile of wood for a few days, dreaming of when it would be under our feet.

On Monday, the flooring guy installed it all, then sanded it on Tuesday, at which time it looked like this:

And that's when the drama began. The stain was scheduled to be applied on Wednesday. When I stopped by the house on Tuesday, the flooring guy had prepared two samples of the stain we'd chosen. Both samples were the same stain, just applied in different ways to achieve different looks.

You can see one is lighter and shows the grain more while the other is darker, but the grain is much less noticeable. I really don't care for the grain showing, and this particular stain has a very high contrast between the grain and the wood. Not my thing.

This doesn't show the contrast very well between the grain and wood, but it's really dramatic in real life.

However, we also didn't want really dark floors (we talked about why here) and the other option was dark. Really, really dark--almost black. No thank you. When we looked at these options, we were told we had to make a decision that evening. It was 5:20pm at that point and that's when I started feeling a little panicky.

Again, not the best photo since it's actually much darker in real life--the camera flash makes it appear lighter than it really is.

Honestly, we didn't care for either option. My mind kept saying "Black or zebra-stripey? I don't like either one! What to do, oh, what to do?". I quick made dinner, drove Marea and one of her friends to dance, then met Eric at the house again. It was dark, but we managed to find the one working outlet to plug in a light. We stared at the floor some more. And then we called the builder and asked what our options were because neither of us liked the options under our feet.

Looking at the floor in the near-dark. I hope we didn't scare the neighbors!

We spent the next hour and a half texting and calling the flooring guy and the builder. After a friendly conversation with Eric the flooring guy, we felt slightly better. They planned to show us a few more samples the next day and we could wait until then to make our decision. Whew!

So, on Wednesday, the wood was stained with a couple more options. The new options that had less ebony undertones, and more brown tones.

New color options--again not this light in real life

Old color options

We wanted the color to coordinate (not match) our other color choices, and I had been wishing we had some of those samples. Luckily, we noticed this sample of our hand rail sitting in the garage.

Seemed like a stroke of good luck it was sitting there since it will also be the color of the island in the kitchen, which will be right against the hardwood floor. So Eric grabbed the sample and held it next to the flooring options.

We immediately knew which one we wanted--the darker brown option in the new color. It's a rich, warm brown which will warm up all the white we'll have going on, and still work with the other warmer tones we have selected with the granite, light fixtures, and wood tones.

Picture the darker floor in the top photo with the granite and cabinets here. Ignore the floor color next to the granite--that was the original color we chose, but ended up not loving.

After we made our decision, the stain was applied and the floor was sealed. Now it looks like this:

Well, most of the floor is actually covered in paper so we can just see small patches here and there. This photo is probably the most accurate one of the color:

See what I meant about the other photos not showing the true color? This is really about as close to the real color we can get in a photo. And ignore all those dirty footprints--they'll get cleaned up pretty soon. We love, love, love how the floors turned out and are so grateful the flooring guy gave us some more options. This is exactly the rich, dark, warm brown color we were hoping to have. What do you think about the color?

Coming soon--cabinets are already part-way installed!