I have a great room/kitchen/dining combo. Right now we have carpet in the great room and vinyl in the kitchen and it needs to be replaced.
We have a tough time making decisions anyways and are having a really tough time.
Our biggest problem is that this house has a ton and I mean a ton of oak trim. The cabinets are oak and the fireplace/built in bookshelf is oak. The windows are trimmed in oak and all the trim is oak. I know oak is out but we are not very trendy and we think it looks ok. We are not going to paint everything, it’s newer and the finish is nice. We have painted wood trim before and it didn’t go well. We don’t have it in us to paint everything and the upkeep involved.
We don’t mind carpet and could re carpet. In which case we guess we could put ceramic tile in the kitchen. That would be the easiest for unimaginative us lol! Beige carpet and a beige tile. We looked at hardwood but wonder what more wood would look like. The problem with the wood is also at the flooring store they don’t recommend it in the kitchen but the reason for wood floors is that everything would be the same. Also we have neighbors with wood floors and the installed a humidifier to keep the floors nice and do not open their windows to keep the house the right “whatever”. I don’t want to live in house where I don’t open my doors.
We looked at laminate but my H is not sure of the look. We want whatever we install to look nice and for lack of a better word, look real.
Any suggestions?
I must say that we did not like the look of bamboo. Or cork. Not the right look for our house.
We have wood trim, and oak cabinets. And lots of wood furniture. Our downstairs floors are all hardwood, and we love the look. We also have nice area rugs.
Deb, wondering if you did a somewhat darker wood floor than the oak trim if that would break up it feeling like it’s all the same wood tone. Not super dark, but darker/richer than the oak - assuming the oak is a light to medium oak.
We recently did our sunporch with a vinyl flooring that SOOO looks like wood. It is a little wider plank, has the plank grooves like real wood. It’s not the vinyl flooring from the past! I have an area rug on top of it in the center of the room - it’s gorgeous!
Carpet is not for me. If you like carpet, fine. But if not explore other options.
A lot depends on where you live. With cold winters you may want carpet in the family room- especially if you have people sitting on the floor et al like we do. Kitchen- tile is cold and hard, one reason I stayed with vinyl in our up north home. Regarding wood stain colors. I personally dislike dark floors. Only go with those if you like them. I also like oak and think it is a shame it is currently out of fashion. Go with what you would enjoy living with, pay no attention to fashion unless you plan to sell soon and your area favors a given style.
We’re now in Florida. Kept carpets in bedrooms and living/family rooms but went with tile in dining/kitchen/baths. Avoided wood because of humidity although many use it- having a neighbor with a water leak from a toilet water line while on vacation that ruined her wood floors at the time we were decided influenced us. I love light-honey stained woodwork but this house came with white so we kept that and changed dark wood doors to white as well. I dislike the trend towards those dark gloomy woods that is so popular now.
Our floors are red oak. They are not stained. There is a nice variation in color and grain, which actually highlights the many different colors of the woods of our furniture. Our builder thought we were crazy because we didn’t want the floors stained…but we didn’t want a uniform look like that.
Deb922, what do you think you like? Do you like carpet? Do you like area rugs? Do you want light or darker on the kitchen floor? It helps to know some of your tastes.
Not a big fan of ceramic tile - grout gets dirty (hate that look) and the tiles can crack. If you install it in an existing kitchen, it shortens the counter height, which limited our options A LOT when it came time to replace our dishwasher. (We could fit either bottom-of-the-line models or foreign dishwashers that cost over $1000.) I don’t care for laminate fake wood flooring, but my parents have a laminate "tile"floor that has lasted years and is very low-maintenance. I second the caution about Lumber Liquidator laminate floors, though.
we have lots of wood like you. we have a wood floor with no stain color. its very light. it looks good with all the oak. we have carpet in our open family room, with the best padding available. it feels SO luxurious. the (younger) kids lounge on it, play games, wrestle, nap, dance, do gymnastics; we love it. if you still have kids at home, carpet is nice.
I am having a tough time with what I want. If I was honest, I think it would be a light wood floor throughout the space. I would like wood in the kitchen but it was not recommended.
I know why my neighbors are putting hardwood in instead of carpet. To put good carpet in would be almost the same cost with installation and good pad as installing hardwood. And if we put in a good laminate, I think would be a bit cheaper.
My H has ideas, like he doesn’t like wood cabinets and a wood floor. And he doesn’t like laminate, definitely not bamboo or cork. This would be so much easier, if I could do what I want instead of him having opinions ;).
I like carpeting in the Family room…I really do. It’s soft, it’s warm, it absorbs sound. And we have ALOT of wood throughout our home, too. We have tumbled tile in the entry way that extends into the kitchen. I like the tumbled tile look. It took the grout a few years to get dirty, then we found AWESOME cleaner at the Dollar Store ($1/bottle) and in one hour it was back to new. That stuff is magic. I don’t find our tile cold at all. It has different colors of beige, cream and even a tiny bit of grey running through it. Its hides alot until I can clean it good.
I love my 5" manufactured wood floors. In FL, you don’t want solid wood, but have 1/4 real wood on top. My g/f used white oak, and I almost used red oak, but the honey maple matched by eclectic wood furniture better. I was very happy to get rid of the tile. In the kitchen, I have cotton rugs by sink and stove. Oriental rugs in LR and FR.
My neighbor used a darker wood throughout and it looks good too. Haven’t seen bamboo IRL, but it looks nice in the showrooms.
So many pretty options out there. It is hard when your husband has strong opinions. If there is a wood you really like, take him to a house that uses that selection. Do you both go to Home Shows? I found them useful.
My whole house is hardwood - even the kitchen. I understand that if there is a water problem floors can be ruined - but insurance would cover that. My mom in Florida just went through it. New dishwasher was hooked up improperly and it was leaking for months unknown to her because the water was seeping under the floor. She didn’t realize anything was wrong until she started seeing small puddles. The water also seeped down the walls to the condo below her. She has to have all the hardwood replaced (kitchen, living room & dining room) and all the kitchen cabinets because the water ruined the bottom of a few. Her insurance is paying for everything and will go after the installer’s insurance to recover. This is the second time they have needed to be replaced - first was from an air conditioning until leak while they were up north for summer.
I like tile in a kitchen but it is very hard. Everything that hits the floor is likely to break, I even broke the tip off of a large knife when I dropped it.
That being said, tile is great in a kitchen and your “softer” alternatives are usually wood, bamboo, and cork, which you don’t want and maybe some kind of lino or vinyl tile which might work. You want to make sure it looks good and will last a long time.
Do you have an extra piece of that oak trim around? Bring it with you to a floor center or Home Depot so you can see how the colors look together. Bring H too so he can be part of it all so you won’t have complaints later!
Is there a store near you exclusive to flooring? I would go there (if possible, during the week when it might not be too busy) and engage a salesman to show you all your options - there is so much out there now! Tile that looks like wood, laminate that looks like tile…you don’t have to buy from them but you can get a more personal lesson on what is out there.
Our kitchen problem was the glue that attached the old vinyl. We had the original fir floor under (when it’s finished, it ages to a red tone) and I had stripped the glue and backing pretty well, but that wasn’t good enough. We went with good quality laminate planks in the kitchen, as close in color as we could to the other floors. Has aged wonderfully (15 years, only one ding) and we rarely notice the difference between the DR/pantry and K floors.
Unstained oak can be beautiful, rather neutral against your other woods. You can throw a rug over it, in the family room. If you do this in the kitchen, think about non-yellowing oil and a triple coat- and plan to re-do it periodically (easier than the first time.) I think they call that a “gym finish.”
Agree about going to a good local shop. They can let you bring home samples and, ime, they know it can be a time consuming decision.
