Hello my friends! Welcome to another (cold!) week! Hope you had a great weekend – my husband was out of town and I had finally recovered from the stomach flu, so my boy and I went out and took advantage of our beautiful weather here on Saturday. We did our Indy children’s museum, the zoo and the state museum all in one day. It was SO wonderful to get out without coats!
I’m super stoked about the new floors that were installed in our bedroom over the weekend! We are slowly moving this house over to hardwoods throughout – it started with a bum fridge that leaked all over our laminate floors years ago. Because of that insurance check we were able to pull out the carpet on the main floor and put in hardwoods throughout. We do finished on site wood and I explained why I love them and the pros and cons here. They do take longer to install than engineered floors, so there’s more patience needed. :)
We got a quote about a year ago to have them put in upstairs but it was more than we wanted to spend at the time, so we decided to break it up. We started with the master because the carpets were truly, truly gross. Four animals and ten years tend to do that.
On Friday they pulled the carpet and tact strips out and then laid the floor in a few hours:
We use white oak, three inch wide boards. Back when we had them put in downstairs I wanted wider planks but was warned against them with our Midwest climate (that sometimes changes 30 degrees in 24 hours) because of buckling. I quite love the three inch though – they are classic.
They use wood filler on the floor and then let that dry overnight.
The next day the meticulous sanding is done and then the first coat of stain goes down. Yesterday he came back and I’m pretty sure he buffs the floor again just a bit because that first coat of stain usually has some imperfections. Then the coat of poly goes on and by last night it was dry:
The poly doesn’t completely cure for a few days or even weeks but I may start moving a few things in later today. As long as you don’t drag items around it’s fine.
As always we went with the Jacobean stain by Minwax and a satin poly:
The satin poly makes my life SO much easier (instead of a glossy) – you don’t see foot prints on them at all. It makes a HUGE difference!
Our room is big, but it looks massive without any furniture! It makes me want to just put our bed back in and that’s it:
The floors will darken just a bit over time but this stain is a good color – not crazy dark but dark enough that it contrasts against the white trim. My very favorite thing. :)
So if I was a better planner and if I hadn’t been hit with the bug last week, I would have tried to do things like paint the walls in the room before the floors were installed and pull up the old baseboards as well. Our base is installed so dang well it makes me sweat and swear to get them out.
Now that the floors are in they are going to be even harder to get out:
Grrr. I so should have done that before! I was just going to extend them using some molding but I am doing a wall treatment and really want to have a different base. So, we’ll see. As anxious as I am to sleep in our comfy bed again, I may try to do this while everything is out of the room. Makes most sense, it’s just hard for my impatient brain to accept. :)
So I have a ton of work to get this room back in order but I LOVE the floors! And I can’t wait for this to arrive tomorrow:
I hope it looks as good as I think it will! I got it 70 percent off last week and it looks like it’s 50 percent off right now!
So could you live with hardwoods in the bedroom? We’re not sure yet if we’ll do hard floors in the other bedrooms someday or just replace the carpet. After seeing what came out of our carpet the other day I’m leaning towards hardwoods. ;) It will be an adjustment to walk around on hard floors in there but I think the rug will help quite a bit (I’m planning on picking up some padding to put under it today.)
So far I’m happy with this change – I’ll let you know if I still love it in a few months! :)