Falling In Love With Wood? Home Depot #LoveMyHouse

For the last few weeks I have made more trips to The Home Depot then I care to admit.  I started with one simple goal.  To replace the hideous tile in my front hall with the hard wood flooring I had been dreaming of for years.  One would think this would be an easy process.  Um, have you met me?  Nothing I ever do is easy.  I must complicate every task given to me.  I must worry about every project, I must ponder every decision.  Everything must be perfect.  I must stop this nonsense and get on with my life!  So finally a HUGE decision, with the help of The Home Depot Canada SassyHubby and I are taking on the biggest home renovation project of our lives!  We are not just replacing the hideous front hall ceramic that we have loathed for years, we are going to smash our way through the office, crash into the bathroom, tear out the kitchen flooring and rip out the family room rug, replacing it all with glorious shiny new hard wood!  Woot!  Oh yes, it’s a full on #LoveMyHouse Reno!  Bye bye ugly front hall!  I am fully prepared to get my shop on, and not stop until I am head over heels in love with some brand new shiny hard wood. 

(Status update:  The current state of our front hall. It is a disaster right now, but we are on our way to perfection!)

If you are thinking renovation, I really can’t think of a better place to start than The Home Depot.  There are so many options for for any kind of renovation, from the simplest of paint jobs to the biggest of kitchen overhauls.

The flooring options alone seem almost endless. 

So where do you start?  How do you begin to narrow things down? As my intent was to put hardwood in so many rooms, including the kitchen, I knew I wanted real wood.  Something that would stand up to the wear and tear of my busy family.  Decision one made.  A tough hardwood, a product that could have scratches buffed out if necessary.  This next decision was the biggest and the hardest for me.  I have a warm honey colour maple stair case (that I do not love) and lighter maple kitchen cabinets that I have no intention of replacing.  This hardwood floor had to be some kind of “magic floor” that would go with both.  How do you begin to pick the perfect colour floor?  You start by making many, many, trips to your local store.  I can now say with some certainty that this couple from the suburbs knows their way around the flooring department of The Home Depot!

Thankfully at this fine store you can purchase samples of wood for about 99 cents, and when you are closer to a decision, you can rent bigger boards to get an idea of how that wood will look in the natural light of your home.  Our front hall looked like some kind of funky wood patchwork quilt for about a week as we hummed and hawed trying to decide what colour was best for us.   Finally after much deliberation, discussion with friends over coffee, consultations with my Mom over the phone, and even a chat with the sweetest Staff lady ever at The Home Depot itself, we decided on this………   

Ahhh! Do you love it!  I think I do.  I better, we are talking about over 900 square feet of hardwood here people!  Do you know what that looks like?  Sort of like this:

SassyHubby and I cleaned out three stores of all their stock, loading down our pick up truck and filling up our living room.  (Big tip.  You must make sure you are going to have enough hard wood floor to complete your job BEFORE you begin.  Don’t forget to have a little more than you measure for.  You have to account for corners, cuttings and even split or broken boards!)

Hubby did the loading and moving of all our product, I took the pictures and made got the take-out dinner. 

So now that the decision has been made, the hardwood has been purchased, and the demolition of our house has begun, all fingers and toes are crossed that what we are doing is taking our abode from a house we live in, to a home we love!  It is truly time to love my house, and I’m ready to get to work, get my hands dirty and start the transformation. 

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