The Steen Style

Confession: I’m a little late in getting this post up. The fourth day of installation (and the last!) was actually Thursday. We’ve had a lot going on though so I’m finally here to tell you about our brand new wood floors that are installed and look amazing!

Here she is! I love that I can see the front door from the bedroom hallway and LOVE that the floors are all the same, beautiful material. This is just the raw wood, I can’t even imagine how I’ll feel once they have been sanded and stained.

Aren’t they pretty? I have a new love affair going on with oak. She is one gorgeous material!

This is a look at the floors coming out of our bedroom and that one in the middle with the dark grain? She’s my favorite board. (don’t tell the others, I’m sure I’ll like them too!) I love her lines and the dark contrast her grain has compared to the other, lighter grains.

Here’s another shot of the new dining room, sans wall, and the beautiful wood floors. (Sorry the photos are so dark, I wasn’t able to take these until after work.)

Like that shot of the living room? Yeah, it stresses me out but soon it will all be worth it, especially when I remember what it felt like to walk on the bumpy, uneven tile. This floor is smooth like silk and just as gorgeous!

One of the coolest features we added (besides taking down the wall and putting the actual floors in) are these floor vents. They are made out of wood as well and are completely level and flush with the rest of the floors! They will be stained the same color and hopefully will just disappear into the floor. I’m obsessed with these! Our floor guy suggested we put these in and they are worth every extra penny we paid.

Side note – if you are considering these wood vents, don’t look at the cost and just do it! You will be amazed at how custom and professional they make your floors look. Yes they are about 10x the cost of a basic, regular floor vent but it is completely worth that cost!

Here is where we were just two short (long) weeks ago! A wall was blocking the dining room from the rest of the house and we had real brick in the entryway/hallways, brick tile in the kitchen/laundry room and carpet in the dining room/2nd living room. It is so weird to see this picture and look at our house now. But really when I say weird, I mean really, really, really amazing!

Here is how the house looks now. Open, fresh and HUGE! The house looks so much bigger now with the consistency of the floors and an opening in this wall.

Another side note: I’ve had questions about this wall and why we didn’t get rid of the whole thing. For starters, we had to keep most of it for support. Secondly, there was already the opening from the entryway to the dining room so we wanted to keep some consistency there. The ceilings are about two feet lower in that room than in the hallways/living room so they would never be even. To us, it made sense to keep that room still feeling like a room, while open to the rest of the house, since the ceiling height differences would have looked really strange when open for all to see!

This is what we are currently referring to as the “sand storm.” The floors look absolutely incredible but it really shows you how blah the wall color is and how not white the wood trim and cabinets are!

With the old, red brick you couldn’t tell any difference but with these floors (pre-stain) it really shows how much of a change we need to make to the rest of this area. Of course, it doesn’t help that I started painting the guest bedroom trim and that door is stark white so everything else in comparison looks gross.

Yay! No more McDonald’s tile. 🙂 Instead, very pretty oak floors. This makes me very happy!

Huge props to our fantastic floor man. We put plastic everywhere to help prevent most of the dust (you can’t prevent it all, sadly) and he used our dining room carpet pad to cover the stainless steel dishwasher and protect it from scratches – love him!

Dust. Everywhere. EVERYWHERE! I have a feeling we will still be finding dirt and dust in random corners of random rooms for several months. I opened up our pantry and quickly shut the door. That will be a fun project to clean up…on opposite day!

Whoopsie daisies! Look what happened when we painted behind the fridge last year. Hah! Oh well. I am really over this wall color anyway and want to paint these a different color. This was supposed to be a light, soft tan – instead, it is a light, soft yellow. Not really what I was going for so before our contractor comes back to install the baseboards, put casings on the dining room openings and move the fridge back in, I will be painting back here and do it the right way this time!

For a look back on what we’ve done so far, check out these posts:
Demolition: Day One
Dining Room Wall Demolition
Demolition: Day Five
Installation: Day One