{renovate: the kitchen} a floor vote

Happy friday friends! I thought it would be fun, since it's friday and all, if we put my kitchen floors up for a vote! 

As we talked about on Wednesday, we were trying hard to completely refinish our original hardwood floors. Above is where we left off. But, some of you might remember that I've actually been thinking about painting the hardwoods for awhile. In fact, I did a post about painting hardwoods a couple months ago. I LOVE the look of painted floors and so we decided to come to a compromise of the original vs. painted hardwood situation.

Here's how it breaks down:

Goal: To create one unified space between the kitchen and living room by keeping consistency in the hardwood floor finish.

Problem: Nasty horrible awful glue on the kitchen hardwood floors.

Solution: Create a template for paint + original hardwoods = best of both worlds. The hope if that having some hardwood showing will still create unity with the living room while giving the kitchen it's own {subtle} unique personality.

Here's where and why we vote. Friends, I have NO IDEA what color to paint floors! And it feels scary to even try and decide. Remember when you all voted on the color of my back doors? You were so incredibly helpful and we ended up with beautiful navy blue high gloss doors. I thought you might like to help again?!

As a reminder, here's the mood board for the room.

And here are the options, so far. The color on the wall, a greige, is the actual wall color.

OPTION 1: Grey

OPTION 2: Navy blue

OPTION 3: Turquoise

OPTION 4: Black

OPTION 5: Black racing stripe (aka, my husband made me to do it ;)

What do you guys think? Is black too harsh? Remember, there will be a lot of white cabinets breaking up the space. Is grey too subtle against the greige walls? Is a racing stripe over the top?! Haha! Is there another color completely you think would work well? You all have amazing taste and I would LOVE to know what you all think.

And, I hope you have a GREAT weekend!

{renovate: kitchen remodel} refinishing the wood floors

To date, the biggest headache of this kitchen remodel has been the refinishing the wood floors. When Chris moved into the house six years ago, he tore up half the carpet in the upstairs and refinished the original hardwoods. And last year we tore up the remaining carpet and refinished the hardwoods. So, all throughout our upstairs we have beautifully refinished original hardwoods. When it came to remodeling the kitchen, in an ideal world, we'd pull up the nasty 80's linoleum in the kitchen and .... refinish the hardwoods! Easy peasy!

And then we pulled up a sample spot. Wop, wop. There were two layers of linoleum glued to the hardwoods with the blackest gunkiest glue ever made. What was left with when we pulled everything up was black hardwoods with lots of remaining green paper (?) securely glued in place (see below). Our little jitterbug sander, which served us so well last year, wasn't even making a dent.

Nice. So these past couple weeks we've been brainstorming ways to deal with this, um, situation. We tore down the wall between the kitchen and the living room to open up the space (see above) and I am worried that treating the floors differently in each room will only create a boundary between the two spaces. Less noticeable than a wall, but still there none the less.

This weekend, when I was flying home from Haven, Chris rented a super duper huge floor sander. The goal was to break through the paper and the glue to salvage the hardwoods.

And hey look! I got off the plane and was put directly to work. Although it was kinda fun to use the huge sander :).

This is what we were left with. It smoothed everything out really well, but still left us with a splotchy floor. Gross. 

We were discussing this with our neighbor and he recommended a belt sander. He had the same problem in his house and it worked great. Have you guys used a belt sander?! I scoffed at first, because it's no bigger than my jitterbug. How could that little guy possible achieve what the super huge sander couldn't?

Well my friends, size apparently isn't everything ;). Look at how awesome this turned out! Oh, by the way, three days after the fact my arms are finally starting to not hurt. Belt sanders are powerful little tools. Four (4!) hours of sanding later, we had this:

So what exactly is the plan? Because our floor actually looks crazier now than before! I'm going to make you wait until friday, for two reasons. First, this post is getting really long. And second, I need your opinions!

I hope you all are having an awesome week! Anyone else have a frustrating renovation they're going through right now? Please share, I'd love to commiserate :).

{inspired} painted wood floors

Friends, do you all think I'm a crazy tease for dangling a kitchen remodel in front of you and then never talking about it again? Yeah. Me too. :)

We're planning, planning, planning. Which I hope makes the actual doing go by much faster :). We did start to tear up the linoleum in the nook though, and were sadly met with another layer of the hardest, most tightly glued and waterproof linoleum. EVER. Seriously, this stuff is NOT budging. We still want to pull it up and try to salvage the hardwoods, because when we're done the kitchen will open up to the living room and it'll just look much better if the floors flow.

In the meantime though, I've been considering options in case we damage some of the hardwood pulling up the linoleum. One idea I've always loved - even before the linoleum debacle - are painted wood floors. Whether stencils, stripes, cafe-style or solid, I think there is something so charming about hardwood + paint. As a bonus, it hides blemishes :).

houzz

country living

everything fab

house beautiful

planete-deco

house beautiful

Has any of you ever painted your wood floors? What about just admired painted wood floors? 
Don't worry, I have more kitchen updates coming this week! :)