Choosing floors to an open space area including kitchen
I have an older kitchen to be remodeled into white cabinets, it’s open to 2 living rooms and a dining room. The floors now are white tile. next to this open area there’s a large living room with reddish hardwood floors and stairs that I like to sand and and make them light.
My delima is what kind of flooring to use for kitchen and open space area taking into consideration the hardwood flooring next to it. The house is on the water in Florida and I’m trying to have a beach feel to it.
Comments (13)
Related Discussions
Please help me choose light fixtures open concept space
Comments (13)A floor plan will really help. It will let us see what lights you can see from where. Is your faucet and your hardware both chrome? and your door handles the dark finish. I can't tell if it is antique brass or not? What is your DR chandy - is it brass? You need to figure out, if you are following the article that you posted what category each of the above elements fall into. (the faucet, hardware, etc.) My feeling is that you have already mixed your metals. For example - in the kitchen you have chrome hardware/faucet (step 1). Step 2 would indicate picking a matching metal which you did with the island light and either of the window lights. (I prefer A2 as it adds another element - the white glass shade - into the mix while retaining the metal. Where I am bogging down is in the transition areas between the rooms which is why a floorplan would be helpful. For the foyer/LR I would pick H2 and J1 but that is subject to change depending on the floorplan and how the rooms are connected. Edited to add: Don't forget, unlike a bathroom, a kitchen comes with other metals. What are your appliances, pots/pans, cutlery. What are your plans for your stools - any metal there? In your foyer, LR and GR - does any of the furniture have any metal in them and if so - what type. Are any of your accessories metal. How about your backsplash. This thought and question was triggered while I was just in my kitchen and happened to notice my copper backsplash which is behind and underneath my stainless steel range and vent. My hardware and faucets are brushed nickel while my lights in the eating area and family room are aged bronze. My pendants are a mix of the two and act as a transition. I treated each `area of the house as a separate area. Kitchen/eating area/family room is one area while the DR and LR was treated as a separate area. Because the Kitchen/eating area/family room had a mix of metals I felt comfortable using either of those 2 metals in other rooms. The copper backsplash was my jumping off point for using copper in a variety of accessories throughout the house.. So, 3 metals throughout the house. This post was edited by blfenton on Wed, Nov 5, 14 at 18:30...See MoreOpen floor plan and choosing paint!
Comments (5)I've been toying with the idea of choosing just 1 color and then getting it one shade darker and 1 shade lighter to make 3 colors. That's harder than you think it would be. Two problems with that color strategy: Remember that most strips of paint color chips are NOT 'color strings' or in other words, all one color, just different lightness/darkness values on the strip. The majority of paint color strips are comprised of DIFFERENT colors. A few brand's color strips are strings, but not many. When most people try the all one color, just different values color strategy, it ends up you can't tell the difference. When it's done, it all looks like one color. To pull off different values of one color, there has to be pretty big leaps in terms of contrast from one color to the next - leaps that are not for the color timid. Considering your circumstances, I'd suggest you get a swatch of Mushroom from Ellen Kennon Full Spectrum Paints. It's super flexible color with the potential to shift and morph harmoniously as you add pieces and change things going forward....See MoreHelp with choosing paint color for my open floor plan living area
Comments (4)I would probably stick with one color for both rooms, if it were me. I instantly thought of BM Grey Owl for what you are describing. It is slightly blue-green while still being a warmish grey. I love it, but it was too blue to pair with my pinkish carpet in my house (didn't want a pastel color combo going on!) I also like SW Passive, but it is a little cooler. If you do the blue kitchen, I would caution against a warm grey with too much pink in it (the baby room effect). I'm definitely no expert, but I just bought my first home too and have spent MONTHS researching grey paint! I ended up selecting SW Useful Grey. It is a greenish grey, which I never thought I'd pick. I guess I'd just suggest taking your time and keeping an open mind when looking at colors :) And definitely buy samples to test in your home......See MoreMain Floor - open concept or not? Floor Plan Included
Comments (5)The answers to your questions will change based on how people live--which may be different from how you or I live. My current home has a formal dining room at the front of the house, similar to your floor plan. We use that dining room once a year on Christmas, and only because I feel obligated; the other 364 days of the year are spent eating meals in our eat in kitchen, even when we're squeezing 10 people around our kitchen table. For our new, downsized home (we're in the final sketches with an architect) there will be no dining room, and a very large eat in area for a table in the kitchen. Because that's how we live. So in your floor plan, I'd turn the dining room into the living room as Patricia suggested, and put a table in the current great room. Whether you do that or leave the dining room at the front of the house, I'd personally leave the fireplace as a separating wall between the great room and living room. If you remove it, you'll then have a huge cavernous space (30'x20') that would then be broken up into different seating areas anyway. The fireplace just makes it easier to break up those areas and provide more of a barrier for times when someone might want to watch TV in one area while someone else would prefer to read or listen to music in the other area....See More
graceelk
5 years agograceelk
5 years agolast modified: 5 years ago
Thx Flo, the whole kitchen is going to be remodeled the picture shows that seating area to be quartz island, the backsplash will be white and the floors light whatever I end up deciding. The red hardwood floor is in very good condition but I really don’t like the color that’s why I was thinking of having them sanded and stained into a natural ligot oak color.
PROFlo Mangan
5 years ago- PRO
Flo Mangan
5 years ago 
PROJudyG Designs
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoI wouldn’t replace either floor. Too expensive a decision for things in great repair. The floors aren’t as important as what goes on them. You can have a beautiful beach style house with dark hardwood floors.
Scroll through these photos.
Southern CT Beach Home · More Info
Jetties House · More InfoIf I were your designer, based upon what I see on my monitor, I would suggest new paint colors and some new furniture (or slipcoers) and area rugs.
Beach…I live at the beach. For those of us year ‘rounders, we do not decorate with beachy decor. It gets tiiresome and old really fast. I have white porcelain wood look floors and that’s the end of the beach influence, and the floors are because we have a dog and a pool.. The rest of my home is much more traditional.- PRO
Flo Mangan
5 years ago 
PROOak & Broad
5 years agograceelk
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoFlo:
the island is L shaped and a waterfall side with cabinets under, the other side of it is in the dining room. You can see it in the real pictures it’s 2 levels. As far as the width I have 48” for some reason it looks narrow in the rendering!
Oak and Broad:
I’m not sure what kind of wood but I know it’s hardwood, I sanded a a plank and I like the color. also the red doesn’t look good with my RH pieces.
- PRO
Flo Mangan
5 years ago
JudyG Designs