New floors!

I'm in pinch me mode right now as I can't believe it but our new unfinished maple flooring is going down. Todd started it yesterday while I had fun at the Interior Design Show with my friend Joanne.

The hallway is done and ends  3/4's of the way in from the kitchen and then there will be tile the the rest of the way.

It just made me giddy to see it as we have lived with shoddy floors while doing other renovations one room at a time and if I were to do it all over again would not have waited so long.

Today, Todd and our neighbour Cameron are working on the living room and dining room.
Cameron is an expert flooring guy as he used to do it every single day before he recently got his dream job as a firefighter.
 Thanks Cameron!

It's going to be a bit of  a challenge moving furniture around since we do not have any spare room on this level to stash it when we do the sanding and finishing. You can also see Todd has finished the coffers using most of the old ones but he had to remake some new ones too.
He still has to put the beadboard and a small crown moulding application inside the coffers.

This maple has a little more character markings in it than our kitchen but other than that they
are an exact match size and profile wise, meaning there is no bevel on the edges. We're laying them lengthwise and opposite the kitchen floors as it visually expands the rooms.

 I think they are beautiful!

We have lived here coming up to 11 years now February 9th and have had to take our renovations slow and or stop altogether due to my health challenges. I am very affected by my visual surroundings and so today is a very very good day to see things finally looking so good.

We will fill in any cracks in the older kitchen floor when we resand it later
so it blends better with the new floor.

I've been telling myself I will wait until the floors are down before deciding if we will keep them a natural maple or stain them. This has got to be one of the hardest decisions because I love light, bright and airy spaces and know we will never live in an all white house and so I think that lighter floors will compensate for that.

Todd in the homestretch.

He'll do the last few rows tomorrow but for tonight we moved
the key pieces of furniture back in to the dining room to relax for the night.

We can't get over how amazing it feels to have nice, uncupped, unsplit,
even, smooth floors, even if they are unfinished.

Even though Cameron says that if we left the floors natural, they would almost catch up to a patina like the kitchen floor, I think it will look too different for too long.
I spent time this afternoon staining up some more pieces of wood and have decided on one
coat of Old Homestead's water based floor stain in Provincial Walnut topped with three coats of
Varathane's poly in a gloss finish.

These floors  make the wonderful character of our house shine and I feel so blessed to call it home.

Sorry about the mess but I wanted to show you the area at the front door that will be porcelain tile. If money were not an issue I would love to make it a heated floor to put wet boots on to dry and to stay toasty warm in the winter time.

I have been intrigued by the thought of a beige or grey hex tile but now that the floors have nice visual flow I think a rectangular tile laid in a brick pattern will tie in better with the kitchen's mosaic backsplash tile and maybe we will do a border in hex tile for a little added interest.

We will be replacing the summer beam in the basement when the warmer weather arrives with a steel one and so unfortunately won't be tiling the hall until
after that is done.

It's a good thing I'm a patient woman and this isn't a TV show!

Hope you have a wonderful week.