Our new wood flooring : why we chose them, how much they cost and all the pictures

The day is here! Revealing our brand new wood flooring – and sharing every detail!  From the install process, to why we made the decision, where we bought them, and how much it cost. 

We have only ever owned old houses, and we refinished the existing wood floors in both of our previous homes.  But in our 1979 ranch house, we decided to rip out the wall to wall carpeting and put in …

solid hardwood flooring

We couldn’t be happier with the choice!  It was a PROCESS to get to how it looks today, but let’s talk about it!

 

Why we chose solid wood flooring:

As I said before, we’d only ever had wood floors before! We loved them, and we were able to refinish them when we moved in. When we researched options for flooring, we looked at laminate, luxury vinyl tile (which we used in our bathrooms & kitchen in our previous homes & loved) engineered hardwood, and solid hardwood flooring

While we talked with people who loved every single one of those choices, we decided that solid wood flooring was the best choice for us.  We wanted to be able to refinish these floors in 40 years if we needed to, and not have to replace the floors entirely.  We loved the weight, durability, and value of wood floors.

And honestly? We’re trying to bring warmth, character and charm to our newer house that we LOVED from our older houses, so it just felt right to put the wood flooring in like we had in our previous homes.

an image that I didn’t adjust brightness or colors on – really shows the true character and tones we love.

 

Where we got the wood flooring:

So cost was a big factor in where we looked and what products we looked at.  Of course this could get really expensive really fast! We looked at some chain bigger-name brands, but they weren’t that cheap.  We even looked at reclaimed wood flooring from a local wood source – but that ended up being way out of budget too.  My parents had used this company in Allentown called Mascari Carpets & Rugs (they also do wood floors) and they were happy with them, We checked them out and the price was WAY better than the flooring places we had looked at before.

I went to the showroom and we picked out the flooring – there wasn’t a ton of choices but I was VERY happy with the one we chose:

 

How much does wood flooring cost?

The thing I liked about where we bought our floors was the fact that they gave us a price that included installation.  The wood we chose – white oak wood flooring – was $7.99 / square foot installed.

Then we had the flooring guy come to our house to check out if we’d need to have any additional costs added to our total.  He said he would need to charge us extra to remove the laminate in our kitchen, which was something we agreed on (FYI that cost an additional $480).

Obviously the total cost can vary SO much because of square footage differences. But we had to cover a little over 1300 square feet in our home (we didn’t do the bathrooms or the sunroom) and the total was a little over $13,000.

 

How was the install process?

The install process wasn’t our favorite.  My husband and I do so many projects by ourselves, so I think we have high expectations when we hire someone out. 

He did a really nice job – that’s not the issue!  But the job was originally supposed to be a 4 day project and turned into a 2.5 week job.  Again – not the end of the world, but when you have kids that are 1, 4, and 6…and a dog, it’s hard to manage staying out of the house for that long! (you guys on Instagram shared in my pain through my stories – thank you!!) And more than that – a HUGE thanks to my parents for all they’ve done for us through this process!  It’s not easy to take on the 5 of us 😅

 

It’s hard when you’re trying to figure out where to nap your toddler every day and you don’t see the flooring installer making a major effort to be efficient with time.  I do NOT want to write this post to complain or to bash any company at all.  We enjoyed the process when we were dealing with the store, BUT we think that there should have been more than one person who was assigned to our job.

I just want to be completely honest so you guys would know what to expect if you’d get flooring installed – and so you could know to request that a TEAM of people would be doing your job instead of one person. We didn’t know to clarify this at the beginning of the process and would do it differently next time in that regard! (Two other families who had used this company in the past had a team of multiple people on their job, so that’s what we assumed would happen with ours as well.)

 

How do you clean your wood floors?

We just bought a steam mop (I talked a LOT more about it in this post) because we were recommended it by a lot of people! We’ve of course only just started to use it but love it – and feel like all of the positive reviews are true!

Click here for my steam mop that I am loving! (it’s an affiliate link)

 

Was it prefinished or did they stain it in your home?

We bought pre-finished wood floors and are VERY happy we did that.  Many things I was reading online said that when it’s finished at a factory and then installed, the finish is much more durable and will last for a lot longer.  I also know that there is a big margin for how a stain could look in different homes after finishing them on site – plus the poly is SO smelly and we’d have to be out of the house for a much longer period of time.

Also – the thing we LOOOOVE maybe the most is the FLAT FINISH.  Game changer for sure.  It hides alllll the dirt!

What about the trim?

We had the installer rip out the existing trim in our home (there were electric baseboard heaters that were no longer used that we had removed a few weeks ago, so the molding was already all cut up from that). We then bought primed MDF molding from Lowes and had the man who installed our flooring also install these moldings when he was finished.  We could have had him put quarter round on the old moldings, but that wasn’t the look we were going for – and I LOVE this look now!

This is the trim we used (this is not an affiliate link) 😉

 

Are we happy with our decision?

YES. We are so happy with the product we chose and we know we will love it for years to come.  It’s such an investment in this house and we are so thrilled it’s DONE so we can finally settle back into HOME!

Thank you for going on this journey with me – those of you who follow me on Instagram have heard a lot more than most! You guys are the best and it’s honestly so fun to share this with all of you!!