Tearing Up the Floor

Our new kitchen floor is being installed this week!

As you may remember from a previous post, this is what our existing kitchen floor looks like...

I have nothing against blonde laminate flooring.  Except when it doesn't match the rest of the house...Or except when it's installed improperly, causing all sorts of gaps and funky edges in the floor.

To be cost effective, we initially wanted to refinish the original wood floor that was under the laminate.  Well....that turned out to be a disappointment.  The kitchen floor is pine rather than oak, the boards are much wider than those throughout the rest of the house and there's a weird metal cap in the floor.

I did some research on historically-accurate kitchen flooring for bungalows and found our options were either wood flooring or linoleum.  Stone or tile flooring would never have been put in bungalows as it was too expensive for the style of home--darn!

We decided to stick with a wood floor for the sake of continuity and the fact that linoleum can get ugly and taste-specific.  Additionally, you can see straight into the kitchen from the front door and as our house is not a mansion, solid flooring would help keep the space feeling as large as possible.

But the fun part?  Trying to find new wood that matches 75 year old flooring that has been well loved...and worn in spots.  We were unable to find any laminate that came even close to being in the correct color family.  I visited several different stores in town and we finally found an "Oak Saddle" that is the closest match we will ever get.  Amazingly enough, the cost-per-square-footage difference between laminate and real wood was very minimal so I was glad we could afford something that would match the rest of the house.

 

To be honest, we really didn't have too many options.  One store did have some samples I liked but they refused to place an order for me--turns out, they're not politically aligned with my father and my last name was a dead give away.  Guess there CAN be disadvantages to having a family member in office!

I've always been a firm believer in things happening for a reason and I think this flooring is just another example of that.  Carpet One has been great about coming by to look at the floor on numerous occassions, talking with us about the possibility of tearing out the pine flooring (yeah, we gave up that idea!) and they've been extremely professional thus far.  I just hope that by the end of the day on Thursday, I'll still be able to say that I am pleased with them and the floor installation!  Until then...