When we purchased our house the odor that emanated from the carpet was atrocious! Insert your own ridiculous synonyms for horrible smell here! It was eye watering bad! We knew that we wanted to replace the flooring in the entire down stairs and eventually will replace the upstairs as well but… you know… money. Anyways we scrounged up enough in our reno budget to do the floors downstairs and had a specialty cleaning company come out to take care of the carpet upstairs! Yup! We had a regular carpet cleaning company come out and it did nothing to touch the smell of the carpet so we had to have a specialty carpet cleaner come. And with specialty comes more money! So fun!
(Let’s just talk about reno budgets for a sec! If you are going to attempt any type of renovation, large or small, you should really have a budget in mind! Heck maybe even put it down on paper! Price out all of the items that you want and then evaluate! If what you want is more money than what you have in your bank account you might need to adjust your materials or even re-evaluate what your must have’s are. We rearranged our budget more times than I can count and to be honest there were things that I really wanted that got thrown out the window! And now that our reno is finally winding down there is still a large list of items that are my “someday” things. Like a farmhouse sink faucet for example. I had to settle for the faucet that came with the sink, for now, because well… it was basically free. We don’t have kitchen chandeliers yet, or any chandeliers yet for that matter. Anyway you get the idea! Renovations are a give and take… unless you have buckets of money and then it doesn’t matter! Ok small rant over!)
Floors! We’re here to talk about floors! I was convinced that I hated tile and did not want it anywhere except for bathroom areas, and even that I was willing to not bother with. I wanted hardwood! What all great farmhouses come with! Duh! While it may look pretty it’s not always practical so I conceded to my very wise husband once again. And tile it was. But I decided if I couldn’t have wood floors I could have something that at least resembled them and gave a similar look, (blow your trumpets here?) wood look tile!
We chose to use a company called Bedrosians. I’m pretty sure they are a nationwide chain store but if they are not in your area they may be able to even ship product to you. We chose them because we have a local store that has a clearance warehouse. And you bet that is exactly where we found our tile!! Yay for splashed prices! Most of the items in the clearance warehouse are there because they have small blemishes. Basically something was a little off when the tiles were being made or the design was being printed on them. Most of these blemishes are invisible to the un-trained eye and we will never notice the blemishes on the lot that we purchased. We chose the 8×36 River Wood in the Taupe color. It is has a brownish grey coloring that varies throughout the tile and with how grey our walls are it really pulls toward the grey coloring. The tile has some look and fell of wood grain although I have seen others with a more promenade hand-scraped look. The River Wood tile comes in a variety of colors as well.
I also really like the look of their Barrel Tile. It has a few color options as well but I love the way the Harvest color looks! It as a very pretty barn wood look to it.
If you are looking for a lighter tone for your floors I really like the look of the Distressed tile in the Betulla color. It brings more whites into the tile and those warm medium brown tones.
Overall I have loved our floors! They are durable so I don’t have to worry about the dog or the kids (my son is riding his trike in our house as I type this) and they are so easy to clean! Plus they have the look I was wanting! Win, win, win! You can find wood look tile at your local Home Depot or Lowe’s as well. They will even do install for you. We had originally thought that we were going to install our tile ourselves to save our budget but that didn’t work out. Our foundation was in pretty rough shape when we removed the carpet and old tile. It was pitted and cracked so it was just easier to have a tile guy come and do the work for us. Our floors had to be ground down and floated before the tile was laid. (Too intense for us common DIYers!) Good thing we had a friend who, “knew a guy!” right?!
Hope this post helped you look at other flooring options if your heart is set on hardwood but it’s just not a reality! Thanks for reading through my caffeinated ranting! I swear I’m only two cups in this morning!
