picking the floors

Picking the floors for us was a long process. We actually started looking at flooring during the fall/winter of 2011.  We looked both online as well as in showrooms locally.  Ultimately we decided last year that it just wasn't the right time, so we held off.  Some of that has to do with our money choices, which I'll share more about some other time.

One benefit of shopping local was service and the ability to see nice big samples that they would let us take home and return.  The samples were always a nice large size, so you could get a good feel for the flooring in your space.  Downside?  Price.  The prices locally were always far larger than online for similar woods (and in some case, the same wood).

The site we focusing our online shopping on was BuildDirect.  I first learned of this site when Dana over at HouseTweaking used it in her Underdog house.  I loved the look of her floors (see here), but felt that birch wouldn't hold up well to our three (two at the time we first started shopping) kids, one (two at the time!) dog and cat. We wanted something harder, more substantial, more dense.  What I loved about it was they would send you samples - as many as five - for free.  You could order more than five, but then just have to pay shipping.  Over the course of the two winters we were shopping we ordered LOTS of samples.

Once we were more seriously shopping it helped that Dana did a "how are they holding up" type post about her floors.  It was good to be able to go read about how she felt about the floors after living with them for a while, and honestly it sold us on BuildDirect even more.

Long story short, after looking at the samples, considering colors, and giving them all a "scratch and dent" test, and considering pros/cons of hardwood vs engineered, we opted for this maple coffee flooring from BuildDirect.

I never actually took any pictures of the sample we ended up choosing but did snap this pic once night after the flooring was here, acclimating and we were still prepping the surface:

If you look at the link to the flooring, you can also see beautiful variation in it, even though the overall color is quite dark.  

Next up, install!