Hardwood Floors

I think that was a great choice. I chose Lauzon engineered hickory, which is very hard. I had to use engineered wood because I have hydronic floors (ie pex water tubes in the floors which heat the house) and to use sand-in-place flooring like you did I would have had to have had sleepers (pieces of wood laid between the tubing) to nail the flooring to (which wasn’t in the design because the architect didn’t know about that option) or have glued plywood over the entire floors and then nailed the flooring to it (but wood acts as an insulator so that plywood underlayment is not the best solution and also I didn’t have the room to add another 3/4” of plywood onto the floor as my ceilings were already low in this renovated home and it would have screwed other things up too). Lauzon is apparently one of the best of the engineered flooring manufacturers so I used them.

Sand-in-place non-prefinished flooring is the best as the sanding and finishing of the floor results in no minute gaps between the floor boards like prefinished. And it looks more ‘finished’ than prefinished, especially the bevelled kind (which I would never use as it looks so ‘fake’) And, with humidity levels changing gaps do open up between the floorboards, but if the floor are sanded in place and finished then the gaps don’t quite occur the same way. Also, an expert floor installer pointed out to me that dark flooring is better than light flooring as if there are any gaps, dirt doesn’t get into the gap and make the seams look dark, so you made a good choice there too.

Hopefully you didn’t use any wood in the kitchen. I did, and I am sorry I did. Within 24 hours after water spilling on a seam, the flooring comes up about 1/4”. Consumer Reports warned about this and I thought any water spilled would be cleaned up right away, but someone always spills something and it isn’t always wiped up. Plus the kitchen, especially around the stove and sink is usually a wet area. An alternative to this is to use tiles that look like wood flooring, which I saw in a very expensive house last year in Forest Hill.

Anyway, uncharacteristically for me, I have no criticism of this choice of yours! Kudos.

Btw, great article in the Globe today.

I have 2 questions: Which flooring brand did you use and what collaboration software are you using?

Oh, the other great decision you made is going with 3-1/2” instead of wider plank flooring. This results in each board shrinking or expanding less due to humidity, thereby minimizing any gaps which might occur. Are you planning to use painted baseboards, doors and trim, natural wood, or a combination?

Hey Scott,

Let me first say thank you – I’m glad you liked the article… and our choice in hardwood! Although we did put it in the kitchen. From what I understand, we should be ok because we’ll be finishing it onsite. The finish seals the seams and prevents water from penetrating. Of course, you can’t let the water sit… but it should save the quick spills. Or so I hope.

The baseboards, doors and trim… they’ll be painted be painted white. We’ll have some stained walnut in the kitchen, the living room and our en-suite bathroom… but the rest will be painted for sure.

Oh, and we’re using 2 pieces of sites to collaborate with our team. The first is Basecamp, which is simple project management application. This is used for tracking to-do’s and messages and whatnot. The other is Image Spark, which is what we’ve been using to collect images for inspiration. You can checkout my page here:

http://imgspark.com/image/listing/jeremybell/

Thanks for those answers. I know basecamp very well and read 37Signals blog all the time.

I should have elaborated about wood floors in the kitchen (but there is no option to go back and edit a post on here before or after someone else posts, as you can see by my 2 additional posts above).

It is really only engineered or laminated floor that are definitely a problem in the kitchen due to water spillage, not sand in place solid wood. As you point out, finishing does seal the seams on such a floor. I did expect that I would simply be wiping up any water in my kitchen that spilled but sometimes it just happens and you don’t notice. Also, a contractor once left a pail of water in the kitchen and there was a small puddle underneath, and the engineered floor expanded upwards and had to be replaced. Consumer Reports warned against using such engineered floors in the kitchen but I didn’t listen as I thought water would always be wiped up. Sometimes it just isn’t. Now I keep a matt in front of the sink that covers the full width between the island (where the sink is) and the stove, but I would rather just see the floor. Oh well.

I am curious as to why you went with wood it the kitchen. I know it was an unconventional choice for me, that I kept explaining to people. And my reason was that I felt that a soft surface, ie wood, should be used in the kitchen where you stand the most, and a hard surface should be used in the living room (if you like that look) where you sit the most. So I used wood in the kitchen, and limestone in the large living room that opens at grade to a large limestone patio). Also, wood does look nice in a kitchen, but a nice tile can look very good too.

So, let me post the question again since you did not respond. Why did you use hardwood in the kitchen, the wettest and most likely to get dirty place in the house (other than the bathroom)?

Hey Scott – regarding your flooring question… the answer is simple. Aesthetics. We wanted the same style and material throughout the entire first floor!

Oh ok. My reason was very different. Even though my house is very contemporary I wanted to have wood because most of the time you end up standing in the kitchen and wood is much easier on your feet.

As for having the same style and material on the entire first floor, I used both limestone (entrance, powder room and sunken living room) and wood (kitchen, dining, front room and halls) in order to break the monotony and cold look that can easily occur in contemporary homes.

I notice there is a one step down from your hall into the room in the picture above. Why is that? I find that single steps are more likely to result in someone tripping than having 2 or more steps, as it is harder to notice.

Hmmm I guess you don’t really respond or read comments on here anymore, or do you?

Hi there,

Long time follower, first time commenter. My parents are also building a house and have used quarter sawn wood as well. However, the reason why it is more expensive than regular oak is that there IS waste. It actually wastes a lot more wood as instead of cutting the round tree into a rectangular box shape and then slicing it (thereby producing planks of an even width), when you cut the tree into quarters – the way they do it makes triangular pieces, you only get a few planks that are the same width. The rest is not as perfectly suitable for the job.

@Dave – From what I understand there isn’t necessarily more waste. I agree that there are leftover pieces that aren’t suitable for flooring, but I don’t believe those pieces are simply disposed of. So long as it’s all used, it’s really not wasted. As for the increased costs, the higher price is driven by the added labour (having to cut and pieces into quarters before cutting them into boards).

What can I say… things have been crazy busy!

Indeed, there as step down into the living room… but I don’t believe anyone’s tripped on it yet! I honestly can’t think of why we did that, other than aesthetics. Our architects wanted that room to feel large and inviting (as did we), so they added the step down to get a higher ceiling. We couldn’t add another step as the basement height was already 8’ there and we couldn’t lower the floor any further. There’s a technical term for it (angle of repose I think?)—essentially, you can only go so far below the neighboring foundation… and given how close the houses are, we couldn’t go any deeper. This limitation actually caused a number of problems… for instance, we needed to added an additional step going into the house because we couldn’t lower the foundation enough. Similarly, we had to push the house towards the back of the lot to accommodate the maximum allowable pitch for the driveway. Ideally we would have simply lowered everything a foot or two and everything would have been perfect… but we weren’t allowed to.

Bah, anyway… getting everything to work is kinda’ complicated.

You’re totally right about the different materials… I completely forgot that we did the same thing in our foyer & bathroom. We went with a filled/honed travertino stone instead of the hardwood in that area. Beyond the aesthetics, we also didn’t want to expose the wood to the water and salt that’ll be tracked in during the winter. The previous house had hardwood in front of the door and it took one hell of a beating each year. I have a feeling this stone will standup a little better than the wood did.