When we bought our house the floors were a mess. A mixture of nasty carpeting, old wood flooring and tile that was broken and wet underneath from flooding. It all had to go. I wish I had the opportunity to save the old wood flooring, but it didn't run through the entire house and so we decided to just start from scratch and put the same thing throughout. We knew that we wanted wood - solid hardwood. But which one?
here's what we were looking at.
Everyone and their brother seems to choose this floor. It's too red for my taste, but I can definitely see the beauty. Brazillian Redwood is beautiful - but definitely not my style.
This one is called Mezzo Mahogany. It's beautiful, but a little too orange for my liking. I love the variations and the smooth finish, but I was worried about scratches from our dogs and our kids to put such a smooth surface through our whole house. In the end, this one helped me decide that whatever I put in would be a little beat up or textured already to help mask the damage that was inevitable from the furbabies and tiny humans.
This Australian Cypress was my favorite! I love the look, the color - but it was out of our price range, so we had to move on... :( Sadly.
Our final choice came down to two handscraped hardwoods. This one is Acacia handscraped and I loved the variation of color - the light and dark and the overall barn look. It was gorgeous!
Versus this Mahogany handscraped. This one was a bit more uniform in color, just as wide (5 3/4" boards) and had that distressed look we were going for.
In a perfect world, I would have done my entire house in reclaimed barnwood flooring. However, as I'm not independently wealthy, my entire house renovation always comes down to price. These two floors were both gorgeous but in my head, the extra variation of the first one wasn't worth the additional 2.79 a square foot I was going to have to pay for it. I was ordering 2300 square feet! So, we opted for the more uniform Mahogany handscraped. In the end, it's exquisite. I love it so much and it really does mask the scratches and dings from life as a normal American family. The factory finish has held up beautifully under the salt from winter and the rocks and the kid dirt and the dog running and me dropping an endless array of glasses in my kitchen. We put it throughout our entire home - except in the bathrooms.
Here it is installed with a cute dog on it for decoration. :) This is Hazel and she's a maltipoo and the cutest.thing.ever. (the random toe sock foot in the corner belongs to my daughter. she rocks all kinds of crazy styles these days)
And one more right after installation. Can you see the slope of the room? Old house = everything leans!!! lol
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