Hello dear friends! It is time for New Flooring For Storybook Cottage. I am estimating that this will be an approximately 6-week process from start to finish. I thought you might enjoy coming along on the journey.
For this first installment of the mini-series “Flooring Fridays,” the “WHYS” of new flooring will be discussed.
New Flooring For Storybook Cottage
Particularly in the kitchen area, the flooring in Storybook Cottage needs to be replaced. This is simply because it is extremely unsafe.
There are approximately eight areas within the kitchen where the tile, laid by the previous owners, is not level.
I have had several near misses in which I’ve been carrying a pot of a boiling hot concoction. My foot hit a tile just right and it resulted in a heart-stopping dance. I stumbled and made a mad effort to save myself from receiving a 3rd-degree burn.
An Unsafe Floor
There are also areas in which the grout has simply worn away. One particular area is quite bad. My mother in law, who walks with a cane, has almost fallen twice when her cane landed in a groove. So this blemish also falls under the “UNSAFE” category.
There are also a few spots where the grout has cracked severely or is simply missing.
This past week I was walking around in bare feet and somehow tripped in this area. This resulted in 1/2 of one of my toenails being torn off. #notfun
So, we can now deem this flaw “UNSAFE” as well, as I would rather not repeat that extremely painful experience.
There are three connecting areas that will also have the flooring replaced.
The kitchen connects to the family room on the left-hand side. It features carpeting that is very well worn and came with a few grease spots. After moving in I tried in vain and failed, several times to remove the stains. They are still stubbornly in place.
We are also the owners of two old fur boys. Franz, the black doxie, has recently been diagnosed with Cushing’s disease. Because of his ailment, he has had several accidents in the family room carpeted area. Despite our best cleansing efforts, it just smells bad.
The attached 1/2 bath and the pantry, to the right of the kitchen, both feature tile of a different color and grout. One is a darker beige and another a sort of mid terra cotta.
Five Types of Flooring
So if you are counting, in the span of just 500 feet, there are 4 different types of flooring. If you also include the hardwood flooring of the formal dining area and living room that also leads off of the kitchen it brings the total flooring choices to 5 different selections of flooring. This is a choppy look within the span of a small space.
The end result is that the rooms do not flow smoothly. To many flooring selections within an area disrupts the eye and the room(s) appear to be rather chopped up. To have just one type of flooring would really open up the area. It would also make the rooms, which are on the small side, appear larger.
Next Friday I will share the latest kitchen flooring trends.
What type of flooring do you love in a kitchen or open floor plan?
Laura
Franz & Rudi are so cute!!!!
The flooring of the last pic is wonderful!
Love
Can't wait to see what you choose. I am having NuCore flooring installed in the family room, kitchen, laundry, pantry and powder room. It looks like wood and is 100% water proof. You can read about it at Floor & Decor.
Laura, we have hardwood flooring in our kitchen. It's safe and easy to clean and it looks lovely and flows beautifully with the eating areas and hallways. However, the previous owners had lots of big animals plus they were running an illegal pet sitting business (we found out too late) and the places where they fed and watered them have nasty stains. They covered the stains with rugs/mats so we didn't find out until we moved in.
For bathrooms, I do like the new wood-look tiles that are popular on the diy shows such as Fixer-upper, property brothers and flip/flop.
I have vinyl, which was a hasty move-in decision. Wood floors throughout the rest of the house except the family room which adjoins the kitchen. That had only sub floor so in the rush to get something just replaced the carpeting. Bad move. Should have done the area as a single unit. If I could do it right now I would lean either toward wood or mock-wood flooring (preference) with area rugs in the family room section or tile. That said, tile can be tough on the back for long cooking stints and anything potentially breakable that drops is likely to break. It might elsewhere — but the odds are better.
We waited many years before replacing much of our flooring because as I've shared in the past, we do not live in a town with a high rate of investment on housing and therefore anything any homeowner does to improve their property is simply for their own enjoyment, so we continue to live with many things that would be likely looked down on in other areas. For instance, our bedroom carpets are now 17 years old, stained with cat puke in various areas and other things but we have so much furniture covering things that you don't notice them for the most part. I don't even know how we would get that furniture out of those bedrooms to even think of replacing the carpeting.
However… as to your question, we did finally replace the stained carpeting and old one-sheet linoleum that used to cover our kitchen space and because our house is under 1200 square feet and only consists of one main living space (kitchen, dining room and living room and a small hallway headed to 2 bedrooms on one end of the house and our master bedroom directly off the living room), we elected to replace all of that main living space with real, sealed hardwood, a couple of years ago and it made such a huge, huge difference. As you mentioned, it really opens up the space since it runs from front door to the entire living space and the hallway. Only the 3 bedrooms remain with the dirty old carpet. I have loved these hard wood floors since the beginning and love them still. They are so wonderful and easy to care for, especially with our cats (who I wish could be trained to only have their puke episodes on the hard wood instead of the carpets!!) 🙂
Looking forward to watching your progress.
I prefer wood or tile. I will never, never, never have carpet in a house again. We pulled up the carpet in a previous home. When I saw the piles of sand on the concrete slab I literally sat down and cried. My husband tried to comfort me by telling me that sand was the result of everyone who had lived in the home in the 20 years since it had been built, but his attempt was in vain. I swore off carpet there and then!
Note on the “hard wood is hard on the feet in the kitchen issue” – we solved that with gel mats in front of the two main prep areas, and a Mohawk carpet with a no-slip bottom in front of the sink.
The gel mats work so well that a 20-something friend of DD recently asked her mom for 'mats like Mrs. H” for Christmas! My gel mats are narrow so that I can just pick them up and hose them off on the deck in good weather, in the sink in the winter.
Flooring…. Wood for me, I like the look of tile but it just kind of comes across a little cold. With all that being said, because of my lifestyle (the farm thing) and having dogs inside and out and sometimes me forgetting to take off my boots because I'm in a hurry I found that allure – it's like a modern laminate would have been a great option for our entire home. We used it in our bathrooms and bedrooms which came after we did the main house. Lesson learned. I think you just have to pick what works best for your lifestyle.
For me having lived with tile, wood, carpet, vinyl and laminate, the wood laminate is my favorite. Tough, easy to clean, ahem, animal issues. We presently have very old worn wood in our rental and we have no secret movements as it breaks with every step! Ann
I live in an older home built in 1958 however have wonderful hardwood floors everywhere except the kitchen and I had laminate put i there and it looks exactly like my hardwood and very easy to wipe up and clean. It looks clean even when its not. I don't mop every week like I did when I had tile down.
No carpet for me anywhere. I have large area rugs in each room except for my studio downstairs and I have tile.
I'm sure what ever you pick will be a wow
First congrats on your new flooring that will be installed! We bought a new Home a year and a half ago and what Sold me on the place, among other things, was the flooring that is in the majority of the Home. It has gorgeous Tuscan Tile and Wood Floors. The few that have fitted carpet {ughhh} at least it was brand new and neutral color… one day I might replace some if not all of that since I'm one to prefer a harmonious look and not too many different floors thruout a Home. Can't wait to see your finished results! Happy New Year from the Arizona Desert… Dawn… The Bohemian
So excited for you!!!!!!!! Can't wait to see the results and what you choose.
It seems like no matter how hard you try, grout gets to be a mess over time. Right? It's so exciting that you are doing this. 🙂