French Oak Floors, Polished Concrete (and More Decisions)

Decisions. Decisions. One thing you can be sure you'll be doing a lot of during a home remodel: making decisions. And, alas, sometimes they are incredibly tough! And sometimes they are super easy. Happily, when it came to selecting our wood floor, the decision was pretty much made for me. We found an awesome deal on Craig's list, so there was no deliberating. We scooped it up. Our new floors are Du Chateau engineered oak. I only later discovered that the Du Chateau flooring happened to be the same floor I had been finding in all of my inspiration images. 

This beautiful floor is called Lugano and it's from the Chateau Collection. While I didn't find this exact floor, I was able to find a surplus of the unfinished European oak from the same collection. And, with some wire brushing and a special oil application, we can make it look just like the Lugano for a lot less!

Ah, but here is our actual floor in Natural. Now, this is a hard decision. I love the warm tones of the Natural. But, then, the breezy coastal vibe of the Lugano is pretty awesome, too. Which do you prefer?

Notice the white washed look with some gray tones in there. It's still a little warm, too. So pretty.

Here are our floors as they were drying this morning. Very warm toned. We decided to go with this oil treatment for the loft room upstairs. See how we like it. But, we have the special Lugano finish arriving tomorrow. So, we'll do some samples of that as well. And it may become the flooring for the great room of our house. We were going to go with polished concrete for the great room, but once we saw how beautiful this wide-plank oak floor looked, we abandoned the concrete. Fingers crossed it is the way to go.

Another angle on the Du Chateau unfinished oak with the natural oil. My dilemma is this: Our diningroom table and hutch are made from old wood that is very similar in tone to this floor.  I don't want the furniture to disappear. So, I'm thinking the Lugano is the way to go. I'll post Lugano pics as soon as we try it out.

Last week, we also started casting our concrete floor. We did just a little strip in our hallway to see if we would like it, but our plan is to run it into the bathroom and both downstairs bedrooms. Our color is similar to this tone above, but a shade or two lighter. We mixed half white cement with half regular gray to come up with a pretty "greige" color. It is getting finished this week.

Oh, now this is pretty, too. It's dark, but notice how the polish really bounces the light around.

This looks so easy to clean. And indestructible.

Another pretty one. Wood, brick and white walls with concrete. You can't go wrong with this combination.

We also have started installing all of the door hardware. It's not as easy as I thought it would be. Our sizing has been a bit off and that has created some real problems. We liked the French look of the Bouvet hardware line, but didn't like the prices. So, we opted to go with the Rustic San Carlos series from Van Dykes Restorers. Everything is in a black finish.

This is the Rustic San Carlos passage lever set.

And I couldn't resist throwing in this image from the finished part of the back of the house. This little casement window was just $20 and I think it looks adorable here. The Kona color is growing on me. If you would look into this window, you would see the kid's new shower and concrete soaking tub down below. They'll have a pretty view of our lemon and orange trees when they are cleaning up. Not that they will care or likely even notice!