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Okay, so today I'm waffling about flooring. We had hoped that would could restore and refinish the wood floors throughout the house (see right), but the flooring guy says no dice. They've just been sanded too many times, and are basically down to the tongue and groove with nailheads showing at this point -- if we tried to refinish them, we'd end up with a ton of gapping between the boards, and not in an attractive sort of way. Plus boards popping up, etc. So we're going to put new hardwood floors throughout the house. Sad, but oh well.
Which means we have to make choices. Choice one: thin strips versus wide planks. The house currently has thin strips, and I had thought that we'd need to stay with that in order to keep the Victorian look. But after a bit of online research, I think wide planks are also reasonably authentic (although perhaps heading more in a farmhouse direction?) Any opinions on that? Kevin and I both prefer the look of the wide planks, and although we've been warned that they're more expensive, if they're not too much more expensive, I think we'd like to do them. Unless someone wants to convince me that they'd look totally wrong in a formal Victorian dining room, or that the thin strips are prettier than I think? The wide planks would look something like this:
Choice two is about wood type. The floors are currently oak, and replacing them with white oak and then staining them to the color we want is definitely an option. But Kevin brought up the possibility of bamboo, which is sustainable and available in a much wider array of options than when I last looked at it several years ago, some of them quite pretty. But would any bamboo look okay in an old house, or would it just look jarring and weird? (I should note that I'm not committed to only doing historic materials or anything as strict as that -- but I want to minimize the super-modern elements. We'll have some appliances, no doubt, but I'm anti-recessed lighting, for example, because it just looks too modern to me for this house.) So maybe bamboo would be okay? Any other types of wood I should be considering?
Would reclaimed floors (from old barns and the like) be too expensive? I found this guide, but not sure how these prices compare to other wood flooring:
"The cost of recycled wood flooring will vary depending on the species, the rarity of the wood and the available supply. Prices range anywhere from $4.00 per square foot for cabin-grade antique pine up to $30.00 per square foot for antique chestnut.
"The following price ranges are given as an example for the various types of wood. Keep in mind that inventories change and pricing reflects the quality, grade and quantity of reclaimed wood available at any given time.
- Wood Species Cost Range Per Sq. Foot
- Antique Chestnut $8 - $30
- Antique Heart Pine $4 - $22
- Antique Oak $8 - $17
- Antique Maple $8 - $13
- Douglas Fir $7 - $20
- Tropical Hardwoods (varied) $9 - $19
Leaving aside the cost for the moment, is it too distressed a look?
There are lots of reclaimed wood options, of course. Here's a lovely reclaimed oak from Carlisle (we're going to check out their Chicago showroom on Wednesday next week):
And choice three is, assuming we end up picking something like the white oak and staining it, what color wood would we like? I loved the Brazilian cherry floors in our condo, and they actually had them in Victorian homes a hundred years ago, which surprised me, but I'm worried that they'll feel overly trendy. I like the look of dramatic dark wood floors, and certainly the wood in the house's basement which has aged a hundred years is nice and dark, but I'm also worried that that's a very trendy look right now, and its current popularity is biasing my opinion of it. (Also, I'm told that dark wood shows scratches and dust pretty badly.) I definitely don't like light wood, so that's out. But I'm torn between medium wood tones, reddish wood tones, and dark wood tones. (Not super ebony dark, though; that's definitely too modern for me.)
Any opinions on any of the above? So many decisions to make! |
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