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lascatx_gw

Picking hardwood flooring color

13 years ago

I'm between that proverbial rock and a hard place. I'm am already at the 11th hour and about to strike midnight on ordering flooring and don't know which one to pick -- I keep going in circles.

We need to have flooring installed before the holidays -- the half bath and dining room have exposed concrete due to damage that has been repaired and they are now ready for flooring. We planned from the time we bought the house to install hardwoods in the entry, dining room and living room and now plan to extend that into the master bedroom. Due to some poor patching work, we have decided to replace the tile in the kitchen, breakfast and family room with cork in a similar color (thought about wood but really want the softer floor in the kitchen for long days of cooking and baking and there is no break between the rooms).

We had visions of cherry or mesquite, but when we got to bringing in samples, those choices didn't go with the knotty cherry island and hutch in the kitchen or the red brick fireplace. Neither of us can see blonde woods in this house, the golden, orangey and greenish tones don't work, so that leaves us with darker browns with red undertones. I've got several samples of the same floor in different finishes that are so nearly the same, yet the photos of those woods online and in their catalog look very different -- it scares me to think that the samples we have may not look like what we could order and get delivered. One other sample is a chocolate brown and it always looks pretty much the same, I love the look. It is dark enough to not fight any of the red tones in the wood or brick. It is a 5" plank while the first flooring is done in 4,6 and 8 inch planks -- and I do like the random width planks as well as the wider ones.

I'm finding this decision harder than all the decisions I made when redoing my entire kitchen. Short of drawing straws, how do I get past this impasse? Realizing that if it is this hard, anyone of them will probably be fine is not doing it. ;-)

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