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Flooring Design Dilemma DIY

Did I pick wrong flooring? How can I fix this?

6 years ago

About a year ago, we tore out the carpet in our main floor master bedroom. We replaced it with gunstock engineered hardwood because we liked the tone and thought it coordinated enough with the living room hardwood floor. Eventually, we planned to refinish the living room hardwood floor to coordinate in color better or replace that hardwood with the Gunstock.

Several months later, we replaced the doors to a solid core solution, but chose painted doors throughout the home. We also painted our cabinets when remodeling our kitchen.

Now, we are stuck with how to handle the living room floors. Our original plan doesn't seem like it will work now because we're seeing how off we are with the trim color. At this point, the trim, doors and floors don't match. It looks a bit piecemeal, which isn't great.

What would you do to get our home finishes back on track?

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Comments (4)

Cara Lewis-Watts
6 years ago
100% paint all the trim in your home to match the doors. You won't notice it, so other features will stand out instead of the trim, which looks dated.
PRO
Express Wholesale Cabinets
6 years ago
Easy fix.

Paint all the trim same colors of doors.

Could also go a step further & paint all the trim, all doors, bright high gloss white.

Use oil primer & high gloss oil paint for durability.

It will visually open the space as well.

Right now the eye is drawn to the trim.
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I think it will look lovely. I almost got mitered doors myself. I asked, and the cabinet guy had not had any problems, though for painted you would have to eventually expect the paint to crack at the joint as with any other door. What stopped me was the extra 2.5k they were going to cost. Turns out we had been using a door I liked for quotes and it happened to be one of the least expensive doors! A big factor for me was ease of cleaning, so we ended up with the simple door we started with. If you want painted doors, you already know what to expect, I hope. And you were using it anyway, so i would assume you thought about cleaning.I don't think there's anything about this particular door being painted that should make you doubt your choices. But of course we will need pics once installed to be sure ;-)
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First off... >>> MOST P & F paints DON'T need a primer! * The paint needs "itself" to be the primer. * At least with ACE P&F (& many others...), if using on bare wood, the 1st coat should only be SLIGHTLY thinned with water...to aid in penetration. * 2nd coat goes on UN-diluted. * Kilz2 is an "OK at best" primer...but only for VERTICAL surfaces, NOT floors. >>> The main weak-spot here...the primer itself. >>> At least you've got high-gloss! From a TECHNICAL-only standpoint, the-glossier-the-better for floors. All in all...I'd leave it as is. It would be a LOT of effort to strip down, re-sand, and re-paint. It'll probably wear fine, believe it or no! When it's time for a normal re-do, re-sand down to mostly bare wood (to get rid of the not-needed Kilz2!), remove ALL dust, and use a top-notch P&F paint. Faron
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hummingalong2
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Paint to the rescue!! I agree with the suggestions of painting all the trim white.
PRO
Cancork Floor Inc.
6 years ago
If you are going to change out the rest of the wood flooring to the gunstock, you will need to do it ASAP. Most "man made" or "factory finished" floors have a shelf life of 18 months. If it has been 9 months already, you may never find enough of the gunstock to complete the rest of the home.

For me, obtaining "the rest" of the flooring is of the utmost importance (if you are still thinking that way). The trim can always be painted.

And I for one have no problem with the window trim. It is far enough away from the gunstock to "work". The problem comes when the floor and the molding are "touching" (like in your last photos).

I would bet the window trim will be fine...but the floor baseboards need to get some paint on them to get rid of this clash. That's about all I would worry about.

But first things first - find out if the gunstock is still available. If it is, then you are SUPER luck and should purchase it as soon as physically possible. You are running out of time to "do more" with this engineered product.

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