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Construction update No. 7.5: Flooring decisions

October 6, 2010

We hadn’t planned on replacing the floors in the bedrooms. The construction guys tried to save it, but when they started pulling it up, it just broke into pieces. It was douglas fir, wood that the floor guys said was garbage wood when we had the floors refinished four or five years ago, but we told them to just do their best. We ended up loving the way they turned out, and I’ll miss those floors.

We decided to go with a pre-finished floor (either engineered or solid wood) for the bedrooms because, frankly, we didn’t want to go through the hassle of on-site finishing of a floor. Having been through it twice (the first time we had a bad batch of finish so the floor guys had to come back six months later to redo it), if I never have another floor done in my life, I’ll be thrilled.

I went to two local floor places and grabbed a bunch of samples. The first floor I saw was one I fell in love with immediately. Brazilian teak. It’s gorgeous. It was also expensive. I didn’t take it home.

When I got home I did a little research on some of the floors I had brought home. Here’s what I learned:

1. You can’t really judge a floor on it’s brand. Every type of wood is different, so one brand might have a great oak floor, but a lousy cherry.
2. Engineered floors (most of them, anyway) CAN be refinished, but not several times over the years. Fortunately most pre-finished floors come with warranties up to 25 years for residential applications, so with luck you’ll be sick of it before you need to refinish it more than once.
3. It pays to shop around. Prices on the Internet were much less expensive than the local stores. Of course I like to patronize local businesses whenever possible, and I don’t even mind paying a little more to do that, but we’re talking more than $2 a square foot difference in some cases.

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We didn’t like these five samples for various reasons: too dark, too red and too “fake” looking (even though it was solid wood). You can see I gave them the full test by walking over them.

When I found out how much less expensive some floors were online, I looked up that beautiful Brazilian teak and found it at a price that put it in the running with some other options. But that didn’t go far. Even though it’s not really teak (like Chilean sea bass, which is really the Patagonian toothfish, Brazilian teak has been given a pretty name to make it sound like something it’s not, it’s actually Cumaru), it’s still a slow growing hardwood. And because there was no mention of sustainable growing practices on this particular product, I’m assuming that’s because there aren’t any associated with it (most products proclaim environmentally friendly practices in a prominent place). And as much as I loved that floor, I think it’s just bad karma to be sleeping in a room filled with wood that used to fill beautiful rain forests in South America.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that we do hope to have a small amount of real teak in our house by the end of the renovation, which is really a homage to our nautical leanings. It will, however, come from responsibly managed teak forests, which doesn’t exactly make it a green choice, but it’s a heck of a lot better than random clear cutting.

We quickly discounted the darkest floors I had brought home. They were just too dark for the room, even though I loved them in the showroom (a perfect example of why it’s so important to look at the samples in the space, even if the space is currently just dust and studs). Two others we didn’t like because they were too red or a little fake looking, in our opinion.

Which left us with three options. It was pretty close between two of them.

Then, while I was downstairs, I heard a loud chirp and came upstairs to find a 10-inch redheaded woodpecker (I think it’s actually correctly called a red-bellied woodpecker, but my bird book is buried somewhere in the bowels of the basement and the red is on their heads anyway) pecking at our newly installed windows. As quickly as we could, we cranked open the windows (no small feat since the hardware isn’t on them yet and all we had was a small temporary handle) and sort of shooed him out, all while hoping he didn’t decide to peck our eyes out.

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The shortlisted options. The first one is strand bamboo. The second is a wide-plank walnut, which was really pretty but pricey and made of a thinner veneer than the other engineered floors we were considering. The third was a wider plank engineered floor that we liked a lot but I noticed it was scratched  just from carrying it around in my car for a few days so that one was out too.

Turns out that he left his mark on one of our shortlisted floor picks. Given that we were sort of stuck (we’re suffering from decision fatigue I think), we took it as a sign. So I guess we’re going with Woody’s pick!

Here are all the previous construction posts:

Construction Update 1
Construction Update 2
Construction Update 3
Construction Update 4
Construction Update 5
Construction Update 6
Construction Update 7

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by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
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previous post: Construction update No. 7: Reality check time
next post: My favorite new plants of the summer

Comments

  1. LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD says: October 11, 2010 at 4:36 am

    We keep talking about getting our living room floor refinished one of these days. Hmm, guess I am not going to rush out and arrange for that!

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
I fell in love with gardening through container de I fell in love with gardening through container design and it’s probably still my favorite type of gardening. My trip to Philadelphia area gardens was full of so many excellent ideas. For several years I’ve been enamored with clustered pots, but in my opinion they work best when they are able to stand alone in a space. And you probably know me well enough by now to know that as far as I’m concerned, the bigger the pot, the better. Feast your eyes on these beauties and use your zooming fingers to really get into those nooks and crannies. 

Don’t forget to save your favorites because you know you’re going to be looking for them come next spring. 😀

Photos 1 & 2: Amazing container cluster at @longwoodgardens  that works particularly well because of the restraint used in the design. Also how many different ways is the universe going to tell me I need to grow agave before I actually listen?

Photo 3: This was probably favorite display I saw the whole time and of course it’s from the masters at @chanticleergarden This is a master class in texture. It’s also probably not attainable for the average home gardener because it relies heavily on tropicals that need proper overwintering in order to reach a good size. But there’s no reason why I (or you) couldn’t use this as inspiration to create a similar feel with other plants. 

Photo 4: Strappy foliage, bright orange and colorful pots create such a good doorway collection at @chanticleergarden 

Photo 5, 6 & 7: Similar colors were used at a patio doorway at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm home garden. A pot is perfectly framed by an arbor off a side patio. The front entrance has a pink theme (and an amazing feature pot that I couldn’t show here because all my shots are vertical). 

Photo 8: Back to @chanticleergarden where I could have studied this container planting for an hour just to soak up all the detail. 

Photo 9: And while I love a pot with a lot going on, never underestimate the power of a simply planted, gorgeous pot, like this one at @abunting64 garden Belvidere. 

#gbfling2023
I think every garden probably needs a little bit o I think every garden probably needs a little bit of water, even if it’s just a bird bath. All of the fabulous gardens I saw recently in the Philadelphia area incorporated water into them. Here are just a few examples of how lovely these water features were. 

@paxsonhillfarm @northviewgarden @brandywinecottage @longwoodgardens #gbfling2023
Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the vi Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the view even though we all know that most of us rarely take the opportunity to use them. The seating I saw in gardens in the Philadelphia area reflected their gardens and all were special. 

Make sure to share your favorite!

Photo 1:  I adored these perfectly lichen-covered chairs at @brandywinecottage

Photo 2: Great lichen game on this bench at Wayne Guymon’s mind-blowing garden WynEden. 

Photo 3: Perhaps my favorite seating moment of the whole trip was this chair in @jennyrosecarey @northviewgarden . Not only was it perfectly lichen covered (are you sensing a theme here?) but a volunteer cleome was growing right up through the middle of it. Unfortunately this photo of it isn’t grata because by this point in the trip my phone (I didn’t want to use my DSLR in the middle of the tropical storm so I switched to my phone) was getting very grumpy about the rain. 

Photo 4: I’d be happy to hang out on these chairs in @abunting64 ‘s gorgeous garden Belvidere. I loved this space. 

Photo 5: Color was the name of the game on this patio at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. 

Photo 6: The most original table and benches I saw were at @abunting64 garden. This was a portion of the garden that was actually on the neighbors’ property adjacent to Andrew’s. It had been a vegetable garden but is getting a bit too shady so it will soon have a new life. 

Photo 7: We visited Barbara Tiffany’s Mill Fleurs in a deluge, which is a shame, and dotted throughout the property are examples of her husband Tiff’s amazing furniture. This was, called the Centipede was upholstered and quite different from the others. All were amazing works of art. 

Photos 8 and 9: The @scott_arboretum at @swarthmorecollege had some excellent seating, from brand new @deebenarc chairs to more lichen-covered charmers.

#gbfling2023
*** I can already see that some people do not unde *** I can already see that some people do not understand humor so let me just say this: 1. I was fully aware of the escaped convict situation (I’m an avid follower of the news, which is common for us journalists). 2. It’s ok to laugh about the fact that I’ve missed the Longwood meadow twice through weird circumstances while being a rational adult and realizing that I’m not making light of the situation that led to the meadow being mown. ***

I missed seeing @longwoodgardens beautiful meadow the first time I visited so I was excited to see it the second time. Not so fast! Turns out it had to be mown down during the search for an escaped convict who was hiding out there (at least that’s what I was told was the reason for the mowing). He’ll never see goldenrod the same way again! 😀

That whole situation was really unfortunate for @longwoodgardens (not to mention everyone who lives in the area), which had to be closed for about a week while the hunt was on!
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