I am using natural maple and natural cherry in various places. I'm not fond of Oak graining. Hickory is pretty but it does have a lot of "character" in it that may not fit.

crazyhouse6,

I don't have any pics to post but I do have experience with hickory floors; Dh and I had them for about 10 years. They are beautiful and very "tough". We had a dog and she did scratch them some but you couldn't tell. We lived in a small house in the woods and like you say, they are rustic. Now that we are building a new house we want hardwood again but we both agreed hickory was out partly for the rustic reason but also because they are very "busy". There is so much contrast that we really want a more uniform look. That said, my son and his wife have a very dark walnut engineered floor in their new house and it shows every little thing; dust, hair, paper, dust bunnies, etc. It is beautiful but they are constantly "swifering" . If you go to some of the flooring websites you can see lots of examples. Fastfloors.com, floormall, etc. I found a beautiful 3 1/2" white oak common that is just a hint of "character" without being "busy". I know white oak and red oak are very reliable hardwoods and do not "break the bank" too. Hope this helps! So many decisions :)

We have hickory- actually character hickory.

We love it so far. It does have a lot of variation but hands down we get more comments on our floor than anything else.

I have the wide plank Brazilian Cherry. They are mildly distressed (wire brush finish) so as not to be so shiny and thus show everything. I really love them. They are from Award floors. They are easy to maintain. I only mop every few weeks with Bona and dust mop or sweep every few days.
I have 1 DH, 1 DS, and a kitty! Not too much traffic although we have our church group over every Sunday evening and I do have to mop after all the foot traffic. (about 15 people or so.) I do like your idea about doing dark and then re doing if you tire of them. It is a considerable cost to re do I here. Here are some pics! Happy floor shopping.

Natural white oak, they are a toasty color.

4" #1 maple. It's installed, but hasn't been stained yet. Leaning towards using a pecan stain, but haven't made up my mind yet.

Rift and Quartered White oak with Waterlox finish. The color is rich and warm. It reminds me of the flooring you see in vintage and antique houses. The R&Q graining is nothing like regular plain sawn oak.

Oak, with teak stain. I didn't want a dark finish because of the dust-showing issues, and most other stains were more gold- or orange-toned than I wanted. FWIW, I've lived with dark floors as well as dark trim, and dust is most definitely an issue.

Do keep in mind that if the wood is *stained*, a certain amount of the coloring is going to sink into the grain, and won't be easy to sand out. It would be easier to proceed the other way -- a light finish now and refinish darker in the future.

Pre-finished character maple on second floor and hall. Character oak planks on the main floor. We were trying to give a sense of age to the home. Unfortunately, on resale most buyers want "new".

All beautiful floors and so many different things you are all doing. Thanks for sharing and please keep them coming.

I have rift and quaartered red oak and plan on staining Walnut color. I am trying to get the color of a Reeses peanut butter cup swirled on my floors, if you can imagine that. I love love love them!

But I must say that IPE floors are gorgeous!!

I have Ipe. I really love them. You have to find your zen place regarding the fact that everything shows on darker floors, but I really think they are beautiful, and they certainly take a lot of abuse from my 4 children. They are not stained, they have three coats of glitsa everywhere but the kitchen. There we applied 5 coats of glitsa.

Amy

We have standard red oak stained medium/dark brown throughout the house except for baths (tile). No thresholds. I didn't see the point in buying white oak for a darker stain. We have a Westie who sheds. (They shouldn't and none of our previous ones did, but this is a rescue puppy mill dog.) I don't have trouble keeping the floor clean -- maybe if it were VERY dark? (Or maybe I'm a lazy housekeeper!)

I am very happy we told the floor guy, "No short boards." I dislike the 'patchwork' look you get with a lot of short boards in a large expanse. Still, these are not the minimum 8' long quartersawn boards our 1950's developer house had (and hid under wall to wall carpeting).

Dark wood floors are a classic and not trendy. Really any color is classic-wood simply doesn't go out of style, period.
Ours do show white dog hair and if you look directly for them you'll see scratches, but overall they are beautiful. Just sweep daily if you have dog who sheds. I use a dry swifter.

Bumping this thread up to get more pictures and input from those who have installed hardwood floors and if they like them dark, light or medium and why. Also in the year 2009 those planning to buy hardwood floors or engineered wood floors or even laminate floors, I would like to have input if dark is still very in or if light floors are coming back in style.

I love the Bbrazilian Cherry wood floor samples in the front of my office by the windows and in my family room but the back of the office, the samples look so much darker since I have no overhead lighting and no windows there. I guess I am afraid to go dark despite being so drawn to the coloring of the Brazilian Cherry floors in pictures I see. If I had a sub-floor, I would do a solid wood floor and have more options.

I do not like rotary peeled engineered wood floors so I am looking at only sawn cut or even a sliced cut is preferable to me. I live on a slab and in the preserved wetlands despite not seeing any moisture problems but I want to be cautious anyway. I don't like the exaggerated grain look of rotary peel oak that I had on my foyers for years that finally were replaced with tile due to the damage on them.

We have hand scraped walnut,natural color(no finish) just urethaned and I love them! They are a little darker than in the pictures(flash)

Yes they are a little more challenging to keep clean than my old oak floors were, but its well worth it.
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Marciab10, I just love your hand scraped natural walnut hardwood floors! They are gorgeous! Maybe I am worrying about going too dark and I should not be. I really love floors that look so warm and inviting. I guess I love so many types of hardwood floors and I am ready to remove these wall-to-wall beige carpets. Thanks for sharing.

I will be putting in 5" hickory just like ponydoc. BTW, what width plank is that, ponydoc?

We ended up going with 5" wide conservation grade hickory, finished on-site and stained a custom mix of natural and chestnut. We love them. Thanks everyone for your help. All beautiful options.

Crazyhouse6, your floors turned out beatutiful. Can you tell me what "Conservation" grade means? We haven't made our final decision on flooring yet, but we saw some "Hickory" at Tennessee Wood Flooring that we liked alot. I am having a difficult time determining how much character the Hickory would have and if I would like that. Can you tell me where you purchased yours? We are in S. Carolina.

Thanks,

Kathy

Thanks Kathy. I had the exact same problem trying to figure out how much character I would be getting with the hickory. While I love the very rustic floors, that wasn't what we wanted for this house. I also was afraid that too much character would be too distracting and busy for all the other elements we have in the house. I believe I mispoke on the exact name (although different distributors will use different names). I think our floors are actually called Preservation Grade from Lon Musolf Distributing (we are in the Minneapolis area of MN). They are longer boards with the knots, but not quite as rustic looking as a lower grade character board. Good luck with your decision. For me, it was one of our hardest decisions with the build, but am very happy with our choice.

We bought a huge lot of salvaged heartwood pine floorboards from a 100-year-old cotton warehouse in Georgia that had been demolished. They're 16 ft long, 3" thick, and 8" wide; we're going to mill them down to get 2 floorboards out of each plank. A couple of friends went in with us and redid their living room. It's very "character" and I thought at first that I wasn't going to love it, but once it was finished with a Minwax polyurethane, it looked fabulous. I'm posting a link to a small gallery of photos that show our friend's floor from start to finish.

We have a friend with a sawmill, and we're going to trade some of the flooring for his house and some sweat equity in exchange for milling the planks down to floorboards. We've bought an awful lot of materials in advance for when we finally build, and the heart pine is my very favourite score so far. :-)


--------------------- Trilby

Here is a link that might be useful: Antique heart pine lumber & flooring

KATS I would love to see more of your kitchen and house! Thanks in advance!

We are in the process of renovationg our 35 year old house and adding hardwood floors throughout the downstairs. However, I am having problems deciding on the stain. The floors are red oak and we are leaning toward staining them special walnut. Does anyone have any pics, comments, suggestions.

ponydoc: I love your floors, what brand are they? I'm looking at Homer Wood but they seem to have more contrast between light and dark than yours which I like better.

Thank you Diva!

They are from Baird Brothers - a local concern that ships anywhere. They are character hickory in 4" widths as I recall. We have lived with them for a year now, they are everything we hoped they would be. Big bonus is they hide a lot of dirt. We live on a farm, dogs, kids horses and dirt is a constant.

Here is a link that might be useful: Baird Brothers

Here is another picture. I especially like how the floors look in the kitchen. They also are very comfy for bare feet - even in winter and not hard to stand on like tile etc. We have about 2000 sq ft of this flooring.

howmuchlonger,
Sorry for the delay in responding. I don't come on this website to much anymore.
Our floorplan is very open with the kitchen basically an extension of the greatroom. As you asked to see, here are a few more pictures of my kitchen. It also shows how we carried the wood flooring throughout both rooms.

KATS thank you for sharing more pictures. Your house is lovely! Can you tell me the wood and stain of your cabs? Thanks again!

Howmuchlonger,
You're welcome and thank you for the compliment.
I'm sorry but I do not have an actual name for the stain on our cabinets. See, we have pine, mahogany and knotty alder doors, the cabinets are select alder and then the natural unstained oak floor. So I went to a small local paint store with a flooring plank and asked them to match the darker streaks in the plank to each of these different woods. They did a little blending here and there and come up with what you see in the pictures. And the best news was they didn't charge me any extra for doing all that. I know I wouldn't have gotten the same service had I gone to a mega-box-store like HD or Lowes.

Kats - Thanks for sharing. You have a beautiful home! Love the woodwork and furnishings!

Anyone install an exotic hardwood floor into a new house build?