Utterly Floored

So! While the outside of our house was in the process of being utterly painted, we were working on getting a few more things inside 'utterly' finished.

Next on the list? The downstairs floors!

While we were frantically painting the ceiling after the plasterers finished it, we didn't have to worry too much about drop sheets because the floors consisted of this basic yellow-tongue composite board.

Our goal was to try to get most of the walls completely painted too before the flooring guys were booked to come in, but there just aren't enough weekends for that So the white undercoated walls remained as the floorboards went in, and we would just have to use dropsheets or be extremely careful for the rest of the painting.

As with every decision we've made with this house, there was quite a lot of dithering involved before  coming to the ultimate choice. I knew from the start that I wanted a timber floor, to keep a bit of the Queenslander weatherboard house consistency happening from upstairs to downstairs, particularly since we opted for plasterboard instead of the VJ board walls in the extension, so we really needed to bring some timber in there.

We considered laminate flooring (on the cheaper end of the spectrum) that has a wood look about it, and although the price was good, I was struggling to come to terms with its plasticky feel. We then very briefly considered real wood floors, and then promptly scrapped that option, since it was about four times the price. After all, this is only a little granny flat under the house we're working with, not the Taj Mahal!

And then, we stumbled across bamboo.

Source

In my view, it was the perfect compromise. It's real wood rather than plastic, so it doesn't have that tinny plastic sound when you tap it with your fingernails, but because it doesn't take hundreds of years to grow (not even close) it's still very reasonably priced when compared with hardwoods. Plus, it's very renewable, which makes it more environmentally friendly. The one downside was that it only came in two colours (unless you got it stained, which we heard not-particularly-great reports about) - a very pale blonde colour, or the honey brown colour that comes from heating it and caramelising the wood a bit.

I had been hoping to come a bit closer in colour to the stain we used on the upstairs floors which was considerably darker, but we decided that we could live with the lighter colour of the honey brown for the sake of the real timber + lower cost equation.

So with the decision made and the boards purchased, the flooring guys turned up on Monday morning and snapped into action, pun intended!

And by the end of the day, we had a transformation on our hands!

How about a side by side before and after, just for fun?

It never ceases to amaze me how each little detail makes such a gigantic difference towards making it feel like a real house!

And the transformation in the other rooms was just as good. The master bedroom...

The corridor leading to the second bedroom...

And back to the lounge and kitchen.

In what was a complete fluke, the colour of the floorboards actually almost matches the colour of the kitchen cabinets perfectly, which makes everything feel very intentional and cohesive. Got to love unintentional surprises that make things look intentional!

I'm very relieved that taking a chance on a slightly lesser known product has paid off so well. I'm so happy with the bamboo. And as an added bonus, apparently it's also very hard-wearing and strong, so won't dent and chip as easily as our soft timber boards upstairs do.

Anyone else got an opinion on bamboo floorboards?