When we first moved in, the only thing we could think about was replacing the wall-to-wall carpet with hardwood flooring, and it seemed like it would never happen. I didn’t let all that carpet stop me from making our home beautiful though. I even wrote a post about How to Decorate Around Carpet. But it’s been over a year since our beautiful new hardwood flooring was installed…and I never even shared it! To be fair, we’ve been living through a renovation for a year and a half, and I haven’t blogged much because I’ve been personally overseeing and executing a lot of our home improvements. But since I get asked about our flooring almost daily, I thought it was high time to give it a permanent place on the blog.
We have three animals, so the sneezing was at an all-time high with all the carpet that was in our house. We knew replacing it with hardwood would be good, but the difference has surpassed any expectations we had.
Before
After
Engineered Hardwood vs. LVP
We chose engineered hardwood flooring after coming very close to installing high-quality LVP (luxury vinyl plank) through a partnership that would have saved us thousands. However, because of multiple supply chain delays, we had time to really think through what we wanted in our home and it wasn’t LVP.
I’m a purist when it comes to materials, so the idea of essentially having plastic flooring all throughout our house didn’t sit well with me (though I know LVP works well for a lot of homes). I’m just glad we ended up having time to think it through and change directions. It took longer and cost a lot more, but I can definitively say that it was worth it. I mean, just look at these floors!
In our last house, despite sampling lots of engineered hardwood options, we ended up with floors that were much darker than we wanted. They were still beautiful, but I knew this time around, I needed to be 100% sure that the tone was perfect for our house so we wouldn’t regret our choice.
Flooring Choice
The flooring we chose was Jasper Provincial White Oak 7.5″ wide planks from the Essex Collection at Build Direct. They look very orange online, but they are the perfect warm white oak color in person.
Our all-wood staircase still in progress but gorgeous already.
It is absolutely essential that you order samples because I never would have chosen these floors by looking at the online listing photo. Instead, I ordered six samples to get a better idea of how the planks would look laid out.
As you can see, they are perfect for our home. They’re light but warm with not even a hint of gray (this was a must for me), and the variation, texture, and character of each plank has my heart.
Square Footage and Cost
Square Footage – Our house is 2,600 square feet and we had about 1,400 square feet of engineered hardwood installed. The rest of our floors are either tile or carpet that will be replaced with new carpet soon.
Cost – At the time that we purchased this flooring, it was $4.85 per square foot. Our total for materials was $7,940.51 and labor was just over $4,000.
Needless to say, we love our hardwood flooring and are sneezing a lot less these days since getting rid of all that carpet.
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