Oh man, door porn on Instagram! I’ll have to look for some of that! Yes, DC is a haven for good doors.
On our last 1925 house (house was a New England colonial white and had a white door. Many windows, no shutters). Went through 3 door colors in the 26 years we had it. Dark green, barn red and lastly and my most favorite, a bright navy.
We had a stained door in our House1. When the stain began to look worn, I painted it cherry red. Was looking on the web to see if the old listing pictures were still there and saw that our buyers just sold the house as two single co-owners. Divorce… They extensively renovated the inside making it a farmhouse (yuck, doesn’t fit the craftsman style), and painted the door black. Not a good choice for a dark navy house!
Our current front door is stained. It will stay that way for a while! 
We do. I have to trim them enough to allow the rugs to lay flat so the GDs and I don’t trip on the edges, which is a pain but it’s worth it to have the cushioning. We recently moved a lot of the GDs’ toys to our sunroom and I bought Mohawk Home 1/4 inch pads for under the rugs out there.
Our home was built on an insulated slab and has porcelain tile over the concrete throughout. It may be my imagination, but it seems that there’s less echo and noise now that the area rugs all have nice pads.
I just ordered as rug pad today - I DESPISE trimming then though - this time I paid attention to the sizes - my rug will be technically 7.9 x 9.9 - so I was able to order a 7.6 x 9.6 - I think that should work without trimming! They usually recommend the pad be 1-2 inches shorter than the rug.
Since hardwood flooring is being discussed, I repeat my question of couple of weeks ago that got no traction:
Anyone have experience with engineered hardwood flooring, as opposed to traditional flooring? Comes pre-finished, sandable a couple of times, strips of wood, being engineered, are straighter and fit together better, etc.
We look at the snap-together floating vinyl floors, and they look fake, as compared to real wood. Would be a lot cheaper I would imagine, though.
We used engineered hardwood replacing downstairs carpeting a few years back. We’re on a slab foundation so installation was pretty easy with a little bit of leveling. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but engineered hardwood looks like solid hardwood, because the top IS hardwood. We went higher end so should be able to be sanded a couple of times.
That being said, D just put LVP in her house. It looks really good and just like wood (to me). She has dogs and was concerned about scratch marks, along with water in the kitchen.
Exactly - we had engineered hardwoods in our house originally and replaced with LVP - it was not inexpensive compared to the engineered hardwoods which I thought it would be. There are a lot of LVP options out there, many very good ones. Wish I’d done it sooner.
We also just put in LVP in our basement. Easy to install, looks great, and less costly.
If our front door was only properly maintained (we’ve never painted it in the nine years we’ve lived here), I suspect it would be the same color!
Painting a door is not hard! I done a bunch of them!
Agree! Painting already painted door is not that hard. Painting a stained door requires a bit more elbow grease… but it is doable! Definitely more enjoyable than repairing drywall or re-grouting a shower (done both!).
Oh sure, we could paint it. The whole house is a trifle dingy, tbh. I’m busy subtly pushing other priorities.
LVP must be much cheaper to install than engineered hardwood----snap-in or glue, i.e. floating floor vs. nailing, right?
We had some flooring purchased for our newly acquired home a year ago. The house already had two different types of flooring. A maple hardwood in the first floor main living area and then an oak hardwood on the stairs and upstairs loft area (a later addition/renovation) All the flooring we wanted to replace in bedrooms and the sunporch was either just subfloor or concrete. We LOVE a waterproof laminate flooring we purchased for our sunporch and dining room - to me it looks more like real wood than the vinyl plank we got for 3 bedrooms. The look and feel of it on foot feels more like real wood. I like the vinyl plank…but truth is, if I had the opportunity to choose again for looks and feel - I’d choose something else. Maybe our installers could have put better underlayment?
They did really lay both the vinyl plank and the laminate flooring quite fast. I imagine hardwood would take longer and be more labor intense??? The vinyl doesn’t look bad and I was quite picky on the type I choose to NOT look fake - price wise for materials it was quite a bit cheaper for us.
We had engineered hardwood installed in the living and dining rooms and bedrooms of a house we built about 20 years ago. It was also on slab. The foyer, kitchen and family room were tiled.
I liked the look of the engineered hardwood but was disappointed in how quickly it was scratched up by our dog’s nails despite her getting frequent trimmings. I thought I’d done enough research, checking the Janka hardness rating and comparing finishes. If we’d remained in the house longer, I would have had the maple floor sanded and refinished. By now they’d probably have been replaced. On the bright side, we never had gaps develop as the new house dried out in the first year like we did in other houses with site finished oak floors.
Anyone have an idea of an online resource for designing a kitchen. One of my kids had a burst pipe and they will likely get new cabinets. She hates the layout of her kitchen and hates the idea of putting back a layout that isn’t useful. They have an adjacent area that they think they can use in addition but aren’t sure if it makes sense.
They also need to pick a flooring. The adjacent rooms are all hardwood. The kitchen was sheet vinyl. They don’t want vinyl wood like planks since it lays next to real wood.
They glued mine down, I don’t recall the price being much less if any less than an engineered floor - however, I do recall a price difference when compared to solid hardwood.
I guess the difference on engineered hardwood and our gunstock red oak smooth solid hardwood - oak is a ‘harder’ wood. We don’t have dogs running through our house, but DD’s large dog and small dog have walked through our wood floor areas. We love real wood (have solid cherry custom kitchen cabinets, alder wood stained cherry in other areas like bath vanities, and solid 6 panel oak doors throughout the home). Workers are installing this same wood flooring in formal living and dining rooms this week, replacing carpeting (insurance claim, with some of carpet damaged).
Installation for our flooring is more than carpeting.
Labor is going up a lot. Materials go up in price over the years, but labor is the recent escalation thing.
Our home was built before LVP; our neighbors decided long and hard before they replaced worn carpet and other flooring with somewhat wood looking LVP instead of wood floor through entry/great room/kitchen/dining, primarily for durability/wear - didn’t want to deal with replacing flooring again/spills/damage.
A friend didn’t realize their big dog’s nails would scratch up their floors until it was too late - not sure what they had for their wood flooring, but it was ‘ruined’ with scratches and would need to be refinished (sanded down and refinished).
Our oak wood floors, when we get ready to sell, will look great with the floor products and buffing machine I have (soft shining the floors). Our stairway is also all oak, but more of solid planks, and spindles/newel posts. My dad (who was a builder in another state) commented about the nice job they did on the stairs/bannisters.
My kiddo is currently working on a Kitchen design with Cabinets.com (which was recommended by my contractor).
He hesitantly did a job for someone who ordered from Cabinets.com and the result was he was very enthusiastic about the quality.
Wonder if IKEA can help?
