soopa

Welp, despite all my talk about Red Oak should be natural ( ) a few things in this thread inspired me to change my mind for the downstairs of my house.

1. fiddle's color thing above
2. ric's comment about furniture "floating" on light floors. this is something i agree with... furniture on light floors does look somewhat less sturdy.

Additionally, I figured, since the floors upstairs are natural, I'd switch it up a bit downstairs. Lastly, since the black slate in the kitchen will meet up to the wood in the dining room, and so would the light maple cabinets, i didn't want the floors to clash or the floors/cabs to look awkward next to each other (being soo similar but soo different).
So... here's what I did...

Testing colors. Minwax Sedona Red, Minwax Colonial Maple, and then the two mixed (which I chose for the end result)


Dining Room...


Close-up...


(Note, all of these are only 1 coat of Poly. 2 more applied since photos)

What do I think of the end product? Well, I think the floors look pretty great in person on their own. Do they go well with the look of everything else? I'm not yet sure. This is a rather drastic departure from my style... so we'll see if I'm able to mesh everything together well.

Kitchen floor goes in Saturday.

fdl

Looks good I think what you have there now is very medium/neutral. Its not too dark, and not too light, so it should work nicely with the rest of the house.

fsttyms1

from the pics it looks good, and should work well with the rest of the house

Street Spirit

Looks and feels much warmer in there now, Adam. Can't wait to see the finished product + furniture!

phile

I'm partial to the medium wood cause we also had cherry in our old house. So my vote goes for the medium tone.

odessa

Looks very good.
I am deciding on the color/type of the floor myself, so I am watching this thread with great interest.

Caddyİ

I like the Darkwoods, but that's just preference. We went with Brazilian Cherry. I love it. My first choice was Brazilian Walnut--which is about as Dark as you can get, and as Hard.


Look at Janka Scale if your looking for Hardness of wood also.

I have a Friend who's in the Hardwood Business.

soopa

Off topic a bit, what is with everything being called "Brazilian..." these days?

I wonder, how much of it is really Brazilian?

I am putting in "Brazilian Slate" flooring in my kitchen, but I'm not sure its really from Brazil.

Are we really chopping down the brazilian rain forest to put wood/stone on our floors? Or is calling everything that's premium "brazilian" just the modern marketers way of desensitizing us to when we actually DO start destroying the rain forest for pretty stuff?

Anyway, I'm just curious. My floor guy mentioned the other day that "brazilian cherry" is now cheaper per sq ft than american oak. I don't see how that's possible if it's trully brazilian? How is every builder in this country using "Brazilian Cherry" in new homes? Do we really have that much "Brazilian" cherry?

Now caddy mentions "Brazilian" walnut? Something is fishy here.

Caddyİ

Yea its a little crazy. I am not at all familiar with slate, but I do know that Brazilian Walnut is harder than other walnuts.


http://www.hardwooddirect.com/Hardness_Scale.asp

I would NOT think that true Brazilian Cherry would be cheaper, but I'm not a supplier so I can't speak to that with any authority. Even if there is an over abundance of the wood in Brazil, the costs of getting it up here would have to keep the price higher--I would think--than the cherry we have around here.

soopa

Hmm, so Brazilian Cherry is from Brazil but it's not cherry. It's either Guapinol (aka Jatoba) or a Brazilian species of Oak...

http://www.trendir.com/archives/000061.html

... and...

It's cheaper than American species because..... of course.... Slave Labor! http://www.laborrights.org/press/bra...ery_090504.htm


Now, forgetting the slaves for a minute, it's kind of FUCKED UP that we're clearing the rain forest to put wood on our floors!

How sustainable is this? It's pretty shameful, really.


Now to find out about the slate... because now I feel pretty shitty.

Caddyİ

Yes, your right it is called Jatoba. No pics of the inside yet, but I'll try to get a few together. We've been in the house since Jan' of this year.

It is a little depressing about the rain forest, considering we get about 20 % of our Oxygen from it:

http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/amazon.htm

fdl

So... the decision has been made. I went with the Nevada stain I mentioned earlier. Its a medium tone, in between a red/orange color and a brown color. Hard to tell from the pictures but I think it will be just dark enough, but not overly dark. This should give me alot of flexibility with furniture.

The big decision was really the wood species, and i finally landed on maple. I was hesitant because my stairs will be oak, but I went to a couple houses that had maple floors and oak stairs and it didnt look akward at all. In fact IMO it looked great. While I like oak floors, seeing the maple I couldnt resist. Plus I figured I may as well do something a little different .


P.S. Soopa, how about some more pics of your floor now that you are all done.

moeronn

For those concerned about the rain forrests and environment, you might want to look into Lyptus. http://www.floormall.com/hardwood/ly..._strip_series/ it's a hybrid wood that grows to full height in 14-16 yrs (about 2-3 times faster than normal eucalyptus). I saw it first on a "what's new" home improvement show a while back (on TLC I think). It's about $5/sq. ft.

Anyway, I'm looking for a cheap ($2-$3/sq ft), but decent (i.e. not high end) laminate or engineered wood floor for my fiance's condo, which we are trying to sell. Any recommendations?