Wood Floor Stains

We have been selecting floor stains. Our inspiration was all based around the Scandinavian, very pale, mat finish, natural wood look. I did a lot of research as to how to achieve this look and came up with many different suggestions all with various reviews and positives and negatives. At the end of the day, we don't want to have to be redoing our floors ever few years and with a baby on the way we aren't kidding ourselves that we are going to be particularly careful with them either. So, an oil based polyurethane finish was suggested. However, I was wary of this as oil based finishes tend to yellow and also have more of a sheen to them, the exact things I was trying to avoid. So our contractor suggested an oil based stain followed by 2 coats of water based poly. This sounded like a better plan.

We chose DriFast's Stain in "white" as it appeared the most natural and didn't bring out the pinkish tones of the oak. Unfortunately we had to do 2 coats as the first didn't absorb evenly so it's a little whiter than planned but still looks great. This photo shows the 2 coasts of stain and first 2 coats of poly. It's now all been covered so the rest of the work can continue and at the very end they will do another 2 coats of poly for extra protection. You can also see the new stairs have been temporarily installed.

Master Bath Tiles cont….Herringbone Floor

We spent many hours this week gettin the tile layout for the master bathroom floor just right. It was very tricky to know exactly how it was going to fall at each corner of the room because of all the angles in the herringbone pattern and because this is not a standard rectangular space so there are a few dreaded "outside" corners to work around. The pattern layout affects the look considerably and after laying it in the way we had drawn on the plans everyone agreed it was actually better turned 90 degrees so the "arrows" of the herringbone ran east west rather than north south.

Here's how it was on the plan:

And here's what we ended up doing (LOVE!!):

Master Bath Tiles

Gregory the tiler has been hard at work this week installing the floor and wall tiles in both the upstairs bathrooms. Here is a first look at the carrara venato marble tiles we chose for the master floor. They were all ordered from www.thebuilderdepot.com where I got a good price and am really happy with the quality.

Shower floor 1x1"mosaic 

Underfloor heating for chilly winter mornings

Layout for the bathroom floor 4x12"tile

Progress

We've been away for a week which is always nerve wracking when you have a renovation going on back home. Being the control freak that I am, I don't like to leave the crew "unsupervised" for too long but this time I was astonished at the progress made whilst we were away. I had a real "WOW" moment when I walked in this morning. The downstairs has been transformed with 99% of the sheetrock installation complete and much of the upstairs is now primed ready for painting. The new wood flooring is also being laid upstairs and many of the ceiling light fixtures have bulbs attached giving a much better sense of the quality of light throughout. It is suddenly getting exciting again and I have a whole new long list of to do's including picking out paint colors.

Looking through to the dining room from the living room

Kitchen