The Living Room Floor at Holiday House is In!!
This post is sponsored by our friends at LL Flooring and ShopStyle Collective. All thoughts and opinions are our own. Thank you for supporting the brands that we love and trust. Also, be sure to check out our promo code at the end of this post!!!
Is it not always the best feeling ever to cross something off a to-do list? Especially when that list is over a year in the making?
When we bought Holiday House (the small cottage on our farm) a year ago, we made a commitment to work on the house in sections so that 1. We didn’t get overwhelmed too easily by all that had to be done, and 2. So we could take our time planning it out and get everything just right. This is going to be our home away from home when we stay at the farm, meaning every decision has to be made as if it were for our main residence.
We demoed the kitchen earlier this year by taking down a few walls, ripping up the vinyl floors and painting the subfloor for a prettier temporary solution. But other than that and painting the living room walls, we haven’t really done much else to the house. PJ took a break from working on it while he turned his attention to our flip house in town, but after a summer of working on the pavilion on the farm and the pond for what seems like nonstop, we decided to resume working on Holiday House. When progress starts happening, that usually gets us in the mood to keep the momentum going.
We’ve never shared this photo before, but this is what the living room looked like right before we bought the house, complete with laminate flooring that had seen better days:
And this is what it looked like after we bought it and moved a few things in:
Because the living room is the first room you walk in to, we wanted to start there when we started the renovation up again. I mentioned how we wanted to get all of the design choices just right to create a serene and comfortable environment for our family to stay in, which meant choosing just the right floor. When we bought it, the house was a mix of laminate, vinyl, and carpet. We knew before we even bought it that we would be replacing the floors, but the question that kept looming in our minds was: what do we go with? Do we go light? Do we go dark? Do we do laminate again because it’s easy to keep clean or do we do hardwood?
Enter LL Flooring. They have so many different flooring options for every style of home, so once we narrowed down what we wanted, it was just a matter of choosing the finish. The house is meant to be a relaxing, cozy retreat, so we wanted a floor that was warm and comfortable and maybe most important: that was easy to keep clean. The house is on a farm and the kids will be going in and out nonstop, dragging in mud and who knows what else. Enough said.
What we love about LL Flooring is that they are truly there for their customers and they work with you for the entire project, from inspiration to installation, to transform your space into something you love with floors that are perfect for your project. Selecting our floors turned out to be easier than we thought because their selection is so vast and their service is amazingly easy. LL Flooring offers quality flooring at a great price and I mean, can you really ask for more?
We narrowed our search down to two options: the 9/16 in. Rattan Maple Engineered Hardwood Flooring 7.5 in. Wide, and the 5/8 in. Prague White Oak Engineered Hardwood Flooring 7.5 in. Wide. We love the wider plank to help make the house feel older than it is (also, wide plank floors allow even more space for the beautiful, natural wood grain to come through and can make your room feel larger) and we went with engineered hardwood because it will hold up better with the way the house was built and won’t bow or buckle over time.
The two options are pretty different from one another. The Prague White Oak is light, fresh and somewhat modern. It feels airy and beautiful, like a true “vacation” home (which is what we’ve always thought of Holiday House).
The Rattan Maple, on the other hand, is darker, warmer and feels…earthier. Does that make sense? It has an older charm about it to me, like it would fit right in in a house that was built a hundred years ago. We want Holiday House to feel like a cottage that’s been on our farm forever; a cozy refuge to hibernate in during the winter and a relaxing escape during the summer.
After going back and forth for a while, we enthusiastically decided on the Rattan Maple! It just felt right for the house. Here’s how LL Flooring describes it on their website:
“Beauty as nature intended, Rattan Maple engineered hardwood is an inspirational starting point for the style of a room. The wide, toffee-hued boards feature dark knots and closed splits, pulling from the most popular trends in flooring. Its neutral color and rustic style bestow simplistic style and grace.”
We ordered it and in a week it was in, so we went to pick it up at LL Flooring in Chattanooga and they loaded it onto our trailer for us. After PJ and our friend Matt put the new windows in the living room, it was time to get started installing the floors. Finally! One more step towards completing this room.
We cleared the room and PJ got to work installing the floors, which was actually a super easy and quick process. The engineered hardwood snapped into place, each piece locking into one another for a beautiful, seamless look. In a few hours the floors were in and, how do I put this lightly…THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL AND WE ARE IN LOVE!!! Although PJ installed our floors, LL Flooring installations are done through their network of expert independent contractors, making the entire process from start to finish even easier.
We plan to put the Rattan Maple floors throughout the entire house, getting rid of the carpet that currently occupies the bedrooms. I think the floors will look stunning in the kitchen with the cabinet color we chose (that’s a whole other post for a different day).
Don’t the floors look so good with the vertical wood walls PJ put in? And see what I mean by “earthy”? The room feels raw and primitive, simple and elegant. The Rattan Maple is absolutely beautiful, especially in the afternoon when the sunlight is pouring in through the four picture windows. I can’t tell you how good, confident and excited we feel about these floors. We both feel like they were the perfect choice for Holiday House, complimenting so well the overall vision we have for this little cottage.
Now we just have to finished the rest of the house! We’re hoping to be finished with most of the rooms (ceilings, walls, floors, paint, and one day, new bathrooms) by the end of the year, as we would love to stay in Holiday House over the winter break. I’m not holding my breath, because life happens, but I’m hoping for the best.
In the meantime, you can find us staring adoringly at our brand new floors. It’s okay, you can stare, too :).
PS: use our promo code PropertyLovers5 for 5% off regularly priced products! Excludes Everyday Value. Full disclaimer: Applies to new orders placed from now until September 30, 2021. Cannot be applied towards existing orders or previous sales. Cannot be combined with any other discounts or coupons. One coupon per person per order. Coupon must be presented to store employee or entered into promo box and applied during online checkout at time of order. Coupon is not redeemable for cash. Void if altered, copied, transferred or sold. May not be applied toward installation services, freight, or taxes. Void where prohibited.