Drastic Change

As mentioned in my last few posts, we have been in the throes of home improvement.  My wood floors were officially finished on November 8 but it has taken this long for some of the dust (and mental fog) to clear so that I can post a few pics.

Let me preface by saying that I have been saving for new floors for four long years.  You know how you have a vision of what something is going to look like and then the reality doesn't quite match?  That's kinda where I am.  I love the variable width of the planks and the true handscraping of the boards.  The wood tone, though, is different than what I was envisioning.  We went with engineered so couldn't customize, but I knew I didn't want espresso or chocolate brown because it would be too dark for me.  The stains that were lighter looked somewhat washed out.  I was going for a medium brown.  Let's just say that tears were shed and I have beat myself up a lot over the past week or so with woulda, coulda, shoulda.  Now you know why I suffer from Analysis Paralysis.

I think the shock of going from light to dark has just thrown me a little lot.  These are beautiful, rich floors!  As you can see from the Before pics, my family room was very monotone.  In that sense, I think the wood helps to warm things up.   I will need to buy some rugs (what kind??) and My Man said we can buy some new furniture pieces for the family room.  I guess I should be excited by that but I just don't want to think about it anymore right now.  I guess I don't do well with drastic change.

What do you think?

Here are some more views in other rooms.  Ignore my lack of staging because I haven't gotten anything everything back in order yet:

Master bedroom looking into foyer

Dining Room

Guest bedroom

I know in my head that I am SO BLESSED to have such a beautiful home and I refuse to let this be the winter of my discontent.  But I feel a little heartsick because I was hoping everything would look pulled together and "done" like I see every day on so many beautiful blogs.  I think I have more work to do.

For what it's worth, My Man and and children love the color!  I don't hate it, I just think everything looks so DARK now.  The gloomy weather we have been having lately hasn't helped.

Enlighten me!  Please!

Floored

I feel guilty that I haven't posted much in the past two weeks.  My husband and I have been preoccupied because I finally decided to swallow hard and confront my latest case of Analysis Paralysis: flooring.

We currently have wall-to-wall carpet on most of the main level of our (12-year-old) home.  We have 12x12 inch tiles in the remaining "wet" areas: kitchen, laundry and baths.

When I got a part-time job about four years ago, I decided to start saving a chunk of cash every month for new flooring for our home.

I desperately wanted wood flooring to replace the carpet both because I love the look and because I much prefer the upkeep.  I also wanted to upgrade the tile in the kitchen and laundry room with a larger 18 or 20-inch square porcelain tile.  What I am aiming for here is a classic look that will last for the rest of my life, since I don't plan on moving again and I think I only have it in me to do a project of this scope once!

About a year and a half ago, I was ready to move forward.   Unfortunately, around the same time, my husband lost his job.  We had five months of economic uncertainty, so we put the project on hold.

Good thing, because now that I have gotten detailed estimates and compared them with our guess-timates, I realize that I wouldn't have had enough money back then to do the entire project.

Part I of the process is to choose the hardwood floor.  Neither my husband nor I has the stomach for the multi-step process of living through solid, nail-down hardwoods installation.

SOURCE

Solid hardwoods are absolutely beautiful floors, but they're not worth the anxiety and chaos and dust that would be created in my household.  Kudos to you if you can weather the dust storm, but I just can't.

So we have settled on engineered wood floors.  Engineered wood flooring is comprised of multiple layers of wood in the form of a plank. The top layer is the wood that is visible when the flooring is installed, and is adhered to a plywood core (or substrate) which provides the stability.

SOURCE

My husband is a mechanical engineer and is absolutely convinced that engineered floors are superior to solid floors for our application in that they are (1) structurally stable and better for use over concrete (our house is built on a slab) and (2) coated with both stain and aluminum oxide finish coats (up to 8) that are factory applied and very hard and durable.  Besides that, he absolutely hates the height differential between tile and solid wood floors because there is probably a 1-inch difference that must be "bridged" with reducers.

Neither of us loves the hand-scraped look, mostly because a lot of the stuff out there is actually machine scraped and has a predictable lined appearance.  But we do like the fact that handscraping camouflages  inevitable scrapes and scratches.

We found a flooring line called Bella Cera Amalfi Coast (in some areas, it's known as Southern Traditions) that has a very subtle handscraping.  We're going with a random width configuration of 4, 6, and 8 inch Hickory planks.  We have decided on the color Deruta which is a warm medium brown.

Bella Cera Amalfi Coast

Next we need to decide on a tile.   My goal is to get this thing done before October is over!  Stay tuned!