Thursday, October 6, 2011

living with white floors

HI All! I thought I'd share about our floors today {along with some project updates}. After a lot of going back and forth, we decided to continue engineered wood floors throughout our main living area and paint them white. Well, no one would paint them so they are actually stained. The wood is glued to the concrete. It was stained several times with Bona's DriFast Stain in White. Since we really wanted the look of paint but the durability of stain, it took about 5 or 6 coats. Stain will {supposedly} hold up better than paint and allows the wood texture to really show through. I've come to like having the wood look but in white. We sealed it with BonaTraffic poly. We did several {7} coats of this as well. When doing your floors, make sure you or the finisher cleans the floor perfectly before applying the sealer. Our guys did not do that, thus the several coats after another light sanding was done. 

 Here's a picture of our kitchen floor. Yes, white gets dirty easily. But my floors have always gotten dirty. :)

 {Hallway}
 {Foyer}
{Living room}
 White floors reflect a lot of light and are, in my opinion, very beautiful. Some have told me I'm crazy, brave, odd, that it's an "interesting" floor, but I love it. I clean it often with Bona wood floor cleaner. If you are building a house with wood floors, regardless of color, central vacuums are essential in my opinion. With two young boys and a sand box, I don't know what I would do without mine!

TABLE!!!
So I had planned on getting all my chair covers done and setting up the table all festive for a photo shoot....but then I realized that it would probably be Christmas before I got this post done and by that time I'd have so many other things to tell you about that I'd be forever behind! So! Here's our kitchen table made by Renewed Traditions. We love it! The boys are "distressing" it daily for me but that's okay. It adds character, right?!?!


 I do have 3 chair covers done at this point and hope to get the 4th one done in the next week or so.

Remember this ugly duckling?? It's now in the living room as my first side table - ever! Yup, been married 6+ years and we've never really had a side table. :)



We've also been working outside quite a bit. In a few weeks we're hosting our first party, and I'm trying to get things together by then. I've been planting perennials and annuals. This week I got a free load of mulch! :) And tomorrow we're getting 50 bales of pine straw. Hopefully, this nice weather will continue so I can finish all my outdoor projects. Today I also started making a chalk board wall, which I am SO excited about for some reason...used the chop saw, nail gun and everything. :) More on that later. {I think I may have to start making myself finish one project all the way before moving onto the next. I just have so many things I want to do right now! Do you have this problem?? or is it just me??}

That's all for now! Have a great weekend!

Helen