What are the flooring options for your home? Amy Everard and I review the basics in this episode. You may remember Amy from the Architect vs Interior Designer episode (#31).
Flooring is on my mind lately as I was struggling to figure out what to do about my own kitchen floor. 13 years ago when we first got this house from hoarders and enlarged the kitchen area, we decided to keep the wood floor that was in the majority of the space, supplementing that with flooring salvaged from the upstairs bathroom project. We transitioned between the two sides with a wide strip of cherry. The finish started coming off the floor until there were grey streaks of damage throughout the floor. During the pandemic, with all 5 of us home all the time, the floor just seemed to get worse and worse. For several years we debated what to do and examined our flooring options.
We thought for sure that we wouldn’t be able to sand the damage out. We couldn’t put down linoleum as we had in our first house because of our center island. We debated painting it with deck paint. When we had to replace our stove we knew this was our chance to paint the cabinets and get the floors done, so we decided to stain the floors gray and paint a (hopefully distracting) vine pattern around the floor.
We were truly shocked when most of the damage sanded out. Not all of it – the floor still has character and some black areas around the dog’s water dish- but it isn’t the same floor. Once we were proved wrong about sanding out the damage, we decided to go with a golden oak finish to match the rest of the house. Not the most exciting, but it looks so much better. Moral of the story – instead of worrying so much about what is possible, check with an expert (in this case that is the floor guy). He told us it would come up and it did. I wish we had actually asked him years ago!
This was our floor. Look how much damage was at the end of the island, all over the floor. Some people buy floor tile that looks distressed like this! To me it was a big concern and kind of embarrassing.
This is the floor right after they sanded and before they stained it. I was out of town with the animals at the time and couldn’t believe the photos, I was stunned. Look at the end of the island, it looks like nothing ever happened there!
Here is an action shot of the floor in use this morning. After we painted the cabinets and installed the stove, we bought some Ruggable runners for the floor to try to protect it from the claws of Jackson as much as we could. He is getting a manicure in a few hours.