Hardwood Floors

We're excited to have hardwood floors in the new house. We enjoy them a lot in our current place and they contribute a lot to the "historic home" look. Here are some photos of the type of wood and stain colors that we're considering. Actually, we have considered just about everything, but we really love the warmth and tone of our current heart pine floors (original to our 1916 apartment) so we would like a similar look. My general preference used to be a darker wood floor - in fact, when selecting the stain for the heart pine floors when I moved in and renovated, I wanted to go darker. I'm so happy my Dad talked some sense into me. I have really grown to love the lighter, more natural (for pine) look and appreciate how the lighter floors keep the place from looking dark since our other furnishings include a lot of dark wood furniture and dark brown leather sofa . All that to say we love what we have now!

Here are some photos to give you an idea. The first one shows my work station, just so no one can say I didn't lift a finger for this renovation! The two pieces of wood are just different grades of the same type of wood. Each piece has three different stain colors - just one coat. I think I will try another coat and add the satin finish poly coat to get a best sense of the finished product. I picked up three nice colors of Minwax Stain at Home Depot. They are, from one end to the darker end, Colonial Maple, Golden Pecan and Cherry. The next two pictures show the two sample pieces sitting on our current floor. One photo is with flash and the other is without so you can get a sense of the comparison to the current floor.

I am liking the Colonial Maple or maybe the Golden Pecan - they are fairly similar so I want to see what a second coat of stain shows. I do like the Cherry, but it is a little brown, I think. I also like the wider plank for size. It is 4" wide. Between the two samples (the different grades of lumber) I am undecided - I think they both look great!

What do you think? While you are thinking about those options, I wanted to let you know that we will have two very special guest bloggers this week! Stay tuned! They will have a lot of ideas and opinions regarding furniture placement and arrangement and tips on selecting upholstery! You won't want to miss it!