The Contractor Visit

On Saturday, the contractor (who built the house) came over to meet with us about getting hardwood flooring and a few other small things we would like done. Turns out that we have red oaks with a natural stain in the entry way and dining room so we're going to go with the same upstairs, although we want to use a larger plank size. We initially thought about doing engineered hardwood but the downside is that you really are limited with being able to refinish it. It's basically plywood topped with hardwood so they layer of hardwood is very thing. You're lucky if you can refinish it 1-2 times before you would need to replace it all. We feel that solid hardwood is going to be worth the money. We're also going to avoid using glues and have him nail down the boards; we also are having him price out the prefinished hardwood rather than putting it in sanding and staining. We experienced this process in our last apt when the landlords decided to refinish the floors before the new neighbors moved in. Even being in the apt upstairs, everything was filled with sawdust and the smell permeated our house for weeks.

He's going to give us a quote this week. I will be really excited to see the samples of the flooring and get going on this, the upstairs is a complete nightmare right now and our room is busting at the seams while it serves as a storage locker for everything that normally goes in the other two rooms.

In painting news, we decided to go with Sante Fe Pottery instead of a blue. Initally M wanted blue but then randomly started talking about reds so we sampled that one and liked it. We felt like blue was kind of boring and we had painted a previous bedroom a similar blue and wanted something different. We felt that we could choose a darker bolder color because we plan to paint the area between the chair rails (where the wallpaper border was) white and use the same red color above and below. Between the white stripe and the light wood floor, it should feel nice and cozy.