What Flooring Makes You Want to Kick Off Your Shoes?
Being completely honest, old wood floors with imperfections make me happy. I love a floor that creaks. In Matthews, NC, there is a hardware store on Main Street, Renfros Hardware, that I love to visit if for no other reason than to walk on their creaky original old wood floors. It even has a certain smell when walking into an old home or establishment. It’s a smell that resonates from the flooring. It smells rich in history. I wonder what stories that floor might tell. In many ways, it takes me back to my childhood, and my visits to my grandparent’s home in Walkersville, Maryland. It was an old home – I mean really old. The hardwood floors were imperfect, scratched, and noisy. Their house smelled like their wood burning fireplace. Maybe it’s just me, but my grandparent’s home smelled cozy – if cozy had a smell.
Now, I don’t want my home to smell like an old house ready to burn down (which it did, by the way), but I would love to have reclaimed wood as the flooring in our new home. Flooring and wood reclaimed from an old home would be great, but it’s not easy to find, and can be very costly. I think old floors would be perfect in our new home, but I’m pretty sure it’s out of our budget. So …
I now have my heart set on white oak hardwood flooring. I like red oak too, but I’ve become partial to white oak. The foyer, halls leading to bedrooms, family room, office, and kitchen will be hardwood flooring. I can’t wait to kick off my shoes and slide across the floor in our new home. Well, maybe not slide, that might be dangerous.
Wide Planks
I love love love wide plank flooring. Big Bear is more open. I am so done with 2″ planks. I will be okay with 4″ – 7″ planks, and for our space, I think 5″ may be the perfect width. Big Bear agrees this would be a nice alternative. Who knew that so many decisions had to go into building and designing a new home. Every last detail needs to be understood when signing a contract with your builder. No surprises. And that is what Big Bear and I have been doing to prepare for the contract with our builder. But, back to hardwood flooring. Wide planks look so darn good in any home, and we are hoping that we can find an affordable option and using white oak.
Engineered Wood
We are not convinced. Not yet. We have found that engineered wood, although a strong alternative to natural hardwood floors, tend to look … well … engineered. Maybe we just have not seen enough choices of engineered wood to make an informed decision. They definitely cost less than original hardwood floors, and that consideration alone is worth looking further into this option, but we’ll have to see. My heart is set on real hardwood floors, and so is Big Bear’s, but that may just be us feeling more comfortable with what we know and have grown up with.
Bathrooms, Laundry room, Mud room
As for these rooms, we’ve been looking at tile alternatives. Because these rooms tend to get dirty and have wet floors on occasion, we’ve decided against ceramic tile floors. My mother slipped and broke her arm twice in two different homes on ceramic tile floors. Nope. Not happening in our home if we can help it. So, we are looking into ceramic alternatives. Something not so slippery.
We are always throwing towels on the floor and over bathroom rugs after a shower. I’d really love to have a tile in our bathrooms that I don’t have to worry about slipping. With my back, one fall and I’d be in the hospital. Yep, getting old is not for the faint of heart.
Front Porch and Back Porch
We were wanting to put brick on our front and back porches, but that has become cost prohibitive in the last 2 years. Even here in North Carolina where they make the brick, it is costly to lay a brick floor. So, that’s out. Big Bear is gravitating to slate. It looks great and is a nice alternative, but we may have to go with concrete to save on costs, leaving just enough space to add slate at a later date. Again, every decision is important.
Driveway
Yes, a driveway is flooring … kind of. This was easy … Gravel. Yep, easy decision and saves thousands. Gravel it is. I won’t be walking barefoot to the mailbox, though, I promise you that.
This is where we are with flooring, and we still haven’t made a definitive decision on what we will be going with, but we have some ideas of what we want, and hopefully that will make the process go faster.
Do you have a favorite type of flooring? Let me know in the comments!
