What floor would look good with Braz.Cherry

15 years ago

We have our family room, dining room and hall done in a 3-inch, glossy brazillian cherry. We're redoing the kitchen now and have really wanted to put wood in there, but because our BC floor shows everything, and particularly scratches, had given up on putting a wood floor in the kitchen.

This weekend I was back in the floor store to check out some options suggested to me in another floor post. And I had an 'aha' moment thanks to the floorgirl! She pointed out to me the different wood floors that had been installed there in the store -about 20. While the BC,and some lookalikes definately showed scratches, other floors looked almost new! So we have decided that we can have wood in the kitchen, just not BC. I'll take a few extra pieces of our existing floor in with me to help narrow down the search, but I wondered if anyone had recommendations that I could specifically look at. Of course I'll bring samples home. It will definately be a matte finish.

Specifically I'm wondering, should we stick with the 3-inch planks? What wood species might look best with it? If you have a specific floor that you love for its durability and think that might look good with it, I would love to hear about it. The family room butts up to the kitchen in an open doorway about 5 feet across, and also in another door-sized doorway.

Thank you so much!

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Comments (4)

2ajsmama
15 years ago
I love the way oak contrasts with BC. Anything light colored would probably work. Oak is pretty hard, don't go maple. Depends on if you want the rustic look. Hickory? Australian Cypress?
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User
15 years ago
Many will say that over time, the scratches give the floor a patina. I'm not really into that patina look, but it's a given, scratches on a wood floor go hand in hand. That's why when we laid our floors, the question we had wasn't how much will they scratch, but how many times can they be refinished. We opted for 3/4 inch planks of Brazillian Walnut in our kitchen because they could be sanded several times over the life of the floor. Like the cherry this is a darker wood, but the planks are NOT stained, they are dark wood all the way through so refinishing just means, sanding out the scratches & putting on a poly finish. If you opt for a Brazillian Cherry that is a solid cherry 3/4 inch plank, (and not just cherry stained) you will be able to sand them several times over the life of the floor, not just once or maybe twice as is the option with Engineered Wood. I'm guessing you have, but if you haven't checked out Lumber Liquidators already, you may want to see what they have to offer, that's were we got our floors from and it was pretty reasonable.

Also, maybe this is just personal taste, but for reasons of continuety, I would use the same plank size you currently have installed in the other rooms.
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mpwdmom
15 years ago
See this thread...I'm a big fan of Jan's maple floors.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cherry Flooring
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bestyears
Original Author
15 years ago
ajsmama - thank you for the specific wood species -I'll take this list with me to the floor store.

lukkiirish - Brazillian Walnut? Didn't even know there was such a thing! I'll look for that as well. Our BC floors are solid wood, not stained, just poly-ed, and yet, the scratches do show a color change. I've attached a picture of the very worst ones. We had an ottoman with staples underneath it, that unbeknownst to us, were scratching the floor every time we pulled it in and out, which was about 4x a day! Ugh. I definately couldn't live with something like this right out in the middle of the kitchen.
I think a lot of the issue though is the shine on the floors, which is why we want to do a matte look in the kitchen. We could always refinish, which sounds great when you are purchasing, but a few years down the road, and you think, whew-jeez, just moving all this FURNiture is going to be a major pain. Then there's the dust,blah, blah, blah...

mpwdmom - thank you so much for that link. Funnily enough I was just admiring amysqr's floor in her rug post the other day, and wondering what it was. I also learned about quartersawn oak -always wondered what that was.

{{!gwi}}
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What floor would look good with Braz.Cherry

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