Do you remember a few weeks ago when I was was complaining of The Corner of Shame?
It was actually a section of flooring that used to be a small veranda until it was closed in, opened up and became part of the lounge room.
Cast your mind back..
So ugly! Despite being the section you enter via the front door, many people claim not to have even noticed the floor, covered as it was with a rug and furniture. But I knew it was there, and looked at it every day.
Don't be distracted by the men in the family, look beyond them to the ugly chipboard.
At the back of the room, do you see it?
Well, finally...it's gone!
The part of the floor that needed covering was less than 7 square metres, but it took us a looooong time to decide what to cover it with.
Our floor boards are hard to match. They are a mix of all sorts of hardwood, and are pretty common around here. I think that when all of these houses went up in the '70s, the builders used whatever they had, and this was it. I think they look great actually, but no one makes anything similar these days.
We considered vinyl, new hardwood, lino, tiles....even material that semi matched didn't work, as it had the wood grain running the wrong way. In the end, we went with teak looking bamboo floating floorboards. We didn't use an underlay, because it really wasn't warranted for this tiny area that would be covered with furniture anyway. There are no rooms underneath, so noise wasn't an issue; plus we wanted the level of the new flooring to be as close as possible to the original flooring.
It was installed in a matter of hours, but the lounge room looked like this for a while...
So completely worth it. I love that Mr BC is so handy, he is willing to give anything a go.
Almost finished! It does look slightly different, but I can live with that. It just needs a joining strip and some beading around the edges to be complete. The difference in levels ended up being less than 5mm, which is not enough to trip on.
After: Look at the 'Corner of Shame' now! It's still missing the beading, but at this stage I am so happy with the new floor I don't even care!
Before: Old 'Corner of Shame'. Yuk!
Ta-da! (excuse the Lego, there is no escape..)
Yes the difference between the original floor boards and the floating floorboards is visible, but the improvement is so great that I honestly don't care. Like everything else in this renovation, it's a compromise that turned out great. It's not perfect, but I love it.
xx
Linking to IBOT today!