Selecting the Stain Color for Our Wood Floors

 

Happy Hump Day everyone!  I am so excited because Mattey-boy finally gets home tonight after being in the Deen for the past two weeks...and it looks like this might be his last trip over for quite some time (for those of you who don't know, he has been spending about 3 weeks+ each month in Aberdeen, Scotland since March for work and his tour-of-duty is finally over)! Yippy for me!!!  While he has been gone this past two weeks, I have moved onto our next major project at the casa, and that's refinishing our wood floors. This is a pretty huge undertaking and has a lot riding on it (literally) because we have wood floors in EVERY SINGLE ROOM of the house (other than the bathrooms and laundry room - I showed you the details here)...and let me tell you, that's A LOT of wood people! Although the vast majority of the floors are the original floors that were installed when the house was built in 1967,  we have expanded the front of the house, relocated the stairs,  moved a ton of walls, and also added on a whole new bedroom during this renovation....which means that we had to install new floors for each of these locations. Easy-peasy, right???? Just go pick up some matching floor at the flooring store and you are good to go?!?! Well, unfortunately, that is 100% wrong in this case. So let me explain, here is a picture of how the floors look currently (with a whole lot of drywall dust and apparently some kind of water (I hope) drop...yummy):

 

 

So, asides from all the drywall dust, we have two major issues.  First, flooring companies no longer make wood floors with the cute little pegs at the end...apparently those pegs actually held the boards down (and are more expensive) so have become obsolete.  Second, 47 year old floors are super tricky to match because 40+ years worth of love gives them a depth and character that you can not recreate with brand new, out-of-the-box wood floors...no mater how much they hand scrape them.  So our solution was to hunt for reclaimed wood floor that were the same or similar vintage...and we totally scored!!! Although the salvaged floors were completely different colors than our current floors, they are real wood and can be sanded down and restained to match.  In the picture below you can see a sample of the newly installed salvaged floors (the ones on the left side of the square) next to our existing floors (the ones with the pegs on the right side of the square), with a sample of stain that matched the original color...pretty impressive if I do say so myself!!!

 

 

So now that we resolved the "how do you match 47 year old floors" issue, it is time for the fun stuff - picking the stain color!!! Fun, fun, fun! The color of our original floors (as you can see in the picture above) was a redish-orangish-brown with dark pegs.  Although it looked super pretty, we have both been leaning towards the idea of darker floors throughout the house (1) to go with the dark trim that we have downstairs and (2) because we think that it feels just a bit more dressed up.  However, I didn't want anything that was too dark, because I didn't want to loose the pretty wood grain and variations in each of the boards. So I thought maybe a dark walnut stain mixed with ebony. I explained my vision to the floor guys and then played Goldilocks for the afternoon wading through the seven samples that they provided:

Starting from the bottom row on the right and moving clockwise, we had

1. Antique Brown (too light and too yellowish-brown)
2. English Chestnut (too light and too orange)
3. Spice brown (getting darker, but not dark enough...although I loved how it really brought out the grain)
4. Coffee Brown {closed grain*} (love the tone and the effect on the grain, but still just a hair too light for my taste)
5. Coffee Brown {open grain*} (definitely good on the darkness, but it felt a bit flat)
6. Ebony {open grain*}(too dark because we completely lost the wood grain)
7. 50% Coffee Brown & 50% Ebony {open grain*} (WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!)

 * Open grain means they wipe the wood with water before applying the stain to open the grain so more of the color soaks in...it makes a huge difference.

 

I absolutely fell in love with the 50% Coffee Brown-50% Ebony combination because (1) it provides the deep brown tone that I was envisioning with the Coffee Brown; and (2) the ebony stepped in to highlight the beautiful grain in each of the boards.  Here is a close up of the color (although the picture above it much more accurate depiction of the color...the color in the picture below is darker than the color in real life and there is more contrast)

So that is one more check on the ol' To-Do List!!! So exciting!  It is going to take the floor guys 10 days to finish the floors, but all the stain and first coat of poly should be down by Monday.  So stop by back to see the update!  I hope that you all have a wonderful rest of your week!!!

Oh, and just cause I am excited and because it's Thursday...I think it is time for a little Carlton!

 

 



Reclaiming Salvaged Hardwood Floors

Happy Thursday everyone! It's been a crazy week, but the Rockets won tonight, which has suddenly made it an exciting series here in Houston. I am 100% game for a time warp and reliving the Clutch City glory days of the Rockets from 1994 and 1995.  I can't believe its been almost twenty years since we won our last championship...cause lord knows I was a mere toddler when that happened (or eehem, excuse me, I meant a teenager).  How time flies! Well, speaking of time flying, we are now firmly in the ninth month of a four month renovation project...oh joy.  However, the old adage that "good things come to those who wait" is starting to come to life at the house, because the reclaimed wood floors have now been installed downstairs and look great. Holla!!! One of the things that Matt and I absolutely adored when we bought the house was that it had wood floors throughout (except in the bathrooms and kitchen where 1960's tile and linoleum lived - pretty).  Here's a look at the floors in the living room before we started demo at the casa.

And here is another view looking towards the living room and kitchen.  This was when we were waiting for the movers to come and take all of our junk stuff to storage.

 

We are keeping the wood floors throughout the house, but have to add new floors where we extended the front of the house, where the old stairs were previously located, and in the vestibule entrance to the master suite.  The areas where we need new floors downstairs are highlighted in yellow in the floor plan below. 

 

 

The existing floors were original to the house.  This created a bit of a problem because you can't just buy new wood floors from the local hardware store and expect them to match twenty-five year old (well loved and well worn) floors.  In addition to the difficulties caused by the age of our floors, each piece of flooring has these super cool pegs at the ends that Matt and loved and really up the vintage feel.  You can see the pegs in the picture below (please excuse the white mess, this picture was taken right after they taped and floated the drywall).

 

Apparently they do not make wood floors like this anymore kids.  Accordingly, we had to find salvaged wood floors that we could re-purpose for our home. And boy did we hit the jackpot.  We were actual able to find a ton of wood that matched exactly.  Score!!!

 

Here's another picture of our reclaimed wood floor loot!

The process of installing the floors was like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle.  Since the salvaged wood floors came from various different locations, the guys had to hunt through all the pieces to find ones that matched perfectly when laying them down. Here's the installation process in action the dining room and foyer extension.

 

And this is what the floors look like after being installed. You can see where the new floor was installed because of the color change.

Here is another view of the newly installed floors looking from the dining room into the living room.  You can also see where they added the new floors to the right of the staircase (that is where the old stairs were located).

 



And this is one last view from the back corner of the living room looking towards the front of the house. You can hardly see a difference from this angle.

However, as you can see from the other pictures, not all the salvaged wood matched our current floors exactly.  That is where the floor re-finishers come in.  The process of refinishing floors is quite step-heavy and labor-intense.  According to the Cliff'sNotes version, they first sand down the floors, then cover the floors with wood filler, then stain the floors, and then finish the floors with a several coats of polyurethane for protection.  In all honestly, I didn't believe that they would be able to make the miss-mash of floor pieces match our existing floors no matter how much they sanded or stained them.  So the builder brought in his guy to prepare a sample for us...and let me say, I was shocked at the difference!  The picture below shows the refinished floors inside the blue box and the unfinished floors to the left and below the square. Wow, what a transformation!  This little section is nearly ready for its close-up darling! I am definitely a believer now (cue the Monkeys "I'm a believer I couldn't leave if I tried..da na na na")!!!!

They still will have to add all the wood pegs to the boards that don't have them.  Also, we are going to stain the floors a darker color, but we haven't figured out the exact color yet.  I am thinking something like this though:

 

Here

 

I dig the fact that the color is on the darker side but retains the warm rich undertones and highlights the beautiful grain in the wood (which I think we would loose if we went with a super dark stain like a java color).  So that is all for today.  I hope you enjoyed seeing our floor progress!  Have a wonderful day and thanks for stopping by!!!