Wood Floors, Backsplash, Counters & More

It’s starting to look like a real house!!

The last glimpse that you guys got of the flip was of the bathroom tile – well, things are moving fast and instead of writing a separate post for each update I’ve decided to lump all the recent developments into one giant mega-post.  Are you ready?

First of all, let me apologize for how crappy these photos are – most were taken on my phone, and most were taken at night.  Forgive me?

Okay, let’s get started.  Remember how there were 50 year old wood floors hiding under nasty carpet?  And we had to add wood floors in the kitchen, and the original floors had to be patched in a bunch of places where we knocked down walls?

Well the floors have all been sanded, and they look gorgeous!!

Our wood floor guy wanted us to go for a hand-scraped finish because he was worried that all of the blemishes from the carpet tacks and staples and the patched areas would look bad, but we wanted to try just a plain sanded finish first (since that’s what we prefer – and it’s cheaper to boot).  Luckily, it looks amazing and totally seamless.

I love how all of the rooms look cohesive and unified now with the wood floors – can you believe the difference?

Once the floors were all sanded and perfect, it was time to choose the stain.  The two finalists were Dark Walnut and Antique Brown.  We loved both options because they were rich and dark, but not too dark.  In the end we chose Antique Brown, which has a slightly less reddish tone (although in reality I think they’re pretty darn indistinguishable).

We’re so happy with the result!!  The floors have been stained and have one coat of poly – the floor guys are waiting to put on the second coat of poly until the other trades get in there and finish up.  The floors were still wet when we went over there, but we were able to peek in and see how things looked in the kitchen:

Pretty, right?!?

And from that photo you can tell that the kitchen counters and backsplash have gone in – details on all of that are coming up now!

First up are the counters – they’re all in!!  We went with shavikashi yellow granite (say that 10 times fast) in the master bathroom.  As we discussed before, we chose a remnant from the fabricator to keep costs down.

And here’s how it looks in the master bathroom!  I admit that it’s not a great pic, and that everything looks kind of dusty and gross – I’ll get you a better shot once the vessel sinks and faucets go in.

And for the guest bathroom (which is still my favorite!!), we chose a remnant of calcutta marble.  It is insanely awesome.

I think it looks absolutely killer in the guest bathroom.

Oh, and you can see in the pic above that the vanity finally got painted!  We picked the paint sample on the right, which is a really deep charcoal.

Now onto the kitchen counters – you’re all familiar with the saga by now (read here for a refresher).  Bianco Romano was the winner in the end – although not the slab we had originally picked, because even though it had the right square footage it was the wrong dimensions.  Fun times.  Anyhoo, here is our actual slab flying through the air:

It was pretty fun to watch!

We were really pleased with how it looked when it showed up at the job site.

They were able to fabricate a piece for the window sill right on site:

And here’s how it looks in the kitchen!!  And did you notice the penny tile backsplash?

I don’t have a photo of it grouted yet, but it looks pretty darn dynamite.

The counters aren’t as dramatic as what we typically choose, but I think it will look great once the kitchen is finished.

So now you’re up to speed on what’s been happening at the flip – what do you think?

Click here to see everything that’s happened at the flip since we bought it in February.

This Post Brought To You By Calgary Basement Development.