Designing a floor

In celebration of our new flooring arriving- here is a little insight into what we have been working on.

Okay, so I am not crafting my own floor, but selecting the appropriate coloring is an important choice.

We have a darker, Malaysian Kempas wood flooring (click the link) upstairs in the living room, dining room, hallway and upstairs landing.  This looks perfect with the wooden stairs that we refinished earlier last year before Isabella arrived.  Okay, who am I kidding, Matt did it all.  I picked the color and propped my 8 month pregnant self up on the couch! ;)  But he did an awesome job and they look great!  There is a lot of lighting upstairs so it looks good.

My concern with continuing this color scheme for the flooring downstairs was that it would make it dark and dungeon looking.  Not at all what I wanted.  It is going to be a special space.  A retreat.  An oasis.  NOT a dungeon.

I decided that I should browse some lighter colored woods to see what we could find and what we both agreed upon.  I found fabulous natural colored woods, but being in a sub-groundlevel area I did not want to have to worry about building a sub-floor just to be able to have it installed.  There had to be a better way.  I am also not one to do what everyone else does, and tile is just boring- so that was out of the question- that is the easy thing to do.  Don't even ask about carpet.  yuck.  In a basement?  double yuck.

So I browsed some of the various grades of laminate flooring just to check it out.  I searched and searched and searched...without a solid choice.  Then we came across the best of both worlds.  Spanish Maple laminate.

It is beautiful.

love. Spanish Maple makes my <3 smile.

I love that it is the light colored wood of natural.  The striated patterned beauty of Maple's wood grain, and it ties in the darker wood that we will take downstairs (framing of couch and TV center) with the natural knotty colors of the Maple.

Bliss.

The stark contrast between dark framed furniture and light flooring is perfect.  I cannot wait to walk on it once it is finished.  It is just what I was searching for.  And better yet- Matt loved it!

Be Blessed.