The floors have arrived!

I was so excited when Bobby called me and told me the floors were in and they were ready to get to work! All of the rooms except the dining and kitchen area already had hardwood.  Some of those areas have been carpeted and tiled (ahh!) over.  For the most part they are in okay condition but they will definitely need to be refinished.  EVERYONE who has had their floors refinished told us to do it before we move in! And that makes a lot of sense to us, so we decided that would be our big project before we moved in!  As for the kitchen/dining area, Bobby and I disagreed. Bobby wanted some kind of laminate & tile and I wanted hardwood.  Because I have the most wonderful husband in the world, we went with wood.  Here's the kicker though! The house was built in the 70's, when they used the narrow hardwood planks.  They are 2 inches wide and would require a special order.  This isn't something Home Depot, Lowe's or Buy Floors Direct carries and of course it was a little more $$$.  It was important to me that we stayed with the character of the home, so once again, best hubby in the world, splurged a little.  And he is not one to normally splurge.  We both felt that if we were going to do it we wanted to do it ONE TIME and the RIGHT way.  And so we did!  All of the floors would be sanded and stained so that it would look natural.  I was very nervous about how well the new floors would blend with the 40 year old floors!

Top to Bottom: Red Chestnut, Ebony, Jacobean, English Chesnut, Coffee Brown

They started out by sanding down a portion of the original floors and putting on different stains.  Now anyone who knows me knows I am an EXTREMELY indecisive person.  Especially my husband, bless his heart!  So this decision was very difficult.  I showed Flavio (our floor guy) a picture of the floors I liked from A Well Dressed Home. (Below)

He told me it was called coffee brown so I asked to see this on the floor as well.  I was kind of hoping I was going to see a stain and know for sure that it was the one.  But I really didn't.  I decided to go with Coffee Brown.

I brought Rion, my niece, along to help me pick out a color but the floor sanders were WAY too distracting :) I love her!

 And so they got to work.  Before sanding the original floors they began installing the new ones.

 

  

I was very pleased with the floors and so excited to keep moving! 

After installation they sanded down all of the hardwood.

This picture just goes to show how different light can change the color of floors, paints, etc...  Both of these pictures are the same floor stain.  However, I took these pictures to show you a little oopsie we ran into.  Notice the splotchiness of the floors? Well it was actually a big blessing.  I'll explain. They were suppose to 'pop the grain' to absorb the stain, which you have to do for darker colors.  Jason, our project manager, asked the floor guys why they didn't do it the first time but I couldn't understand what they told him. It was around 8 pm at this point. They were going to have to resand and restain the floors.  That was a blessing because I didn't like the stain I had chosen... Ooops!  I figured since they had to resand everything back down to the original anyway it wasn't a big deal if I changed it but for some reason that ticked off a few people, including my husband.  I really try not to be a difficult person but we were paying money, a lot of money, to have these floors done and this was my chance to change it! So there, at 8:30 pm, they pulled out their stain colors and put some more choices on the floor. 

And I was a happy camper.  I decided to go with Jacobean.  Flavio said I would end up hating it so I gave him the evil eye and said, "GIVE ME JACOBEAN!" Just kidding, I smiled politely and told him that was what I wanted.

The next step for us was getting the baseboards.  Now I wasn't indecisive about this and once again, awesome hubby, let me pick out the baseboards I really liked even thought they were a tiny bit more pricey.  We had to buy  a lot of baseboards! They came in 16 ft sections, which we weren't to have cut down.  Bobby's truck bed is only 8 feet so I followed him home from Home Depot, very nervous that with every bounce my new, pretty baseboards were going to snap in half.  Luckily, we made it safely home.  

We had to do the baseboards in 2 groups since there were so many. WHAT A PAIN it is painting baseboards!

It is also very expensive.  We paid $80 for two quarts of paint, 2 brushes and a bottle of mineral spirits.  And now we are broke :( but we have pretty baseboards :)

I had never used this kind of paint before but had heard wonderful things about it from other DIYers in the paint section at HD (haha).  It is a gel paint that doesn't drip/run or show brush marks.  I have to say, it's awesome! Don't use anything else on doors or trim.  However, if your doors or trim are already painted with a latex paint you will have to prime them before you can use this oil based paint.

It's very important not the shake the paint! Weird looking, isn't it?  After a gently stir it looks like normal paint.  Two quarts got us through 30 baseboards.  Side note, we painted outside and of course, the wind blew some leaves onto the very wet baseboards, and some bugs landed on them as well.  I was a little concerned about this but once they were completely dry they wiped right off and didn't even bother the paint. Whew, we were lucky!

Here's the first four we finished.  The can says it takes the paint eight hours to dry, but even at eight hours they were still a little tacky! 

That's all I can show you now! Tomorrow I will post the after pictures! 

They. look. AWESOME!