Saving Etta: Why I Couldn’t Save the Original 1900 Wood Floors

The day I realized I couldn’t save Etta’s original wood floors was one of the roughest days during the demolition phase. By then we discovered that most of the flooring in the north bedroom was too water damaged to reuse. The floors in the south bedroom were in better shape, but they were covered with a glue down linoleum flooring.

Sadly there wasn’t a sure fire way to tell if they would be salvageable after removal of the linoleum. I decided to proceed with demolition and try to salvage as much of the wood floor as I could. But during demolition almost every board we pulled up cracked and splintered as we freed them from the floor joists. Because there was no subfloor, the wood had been exposed to the crawlspace for more than 100 years. Time had taken a toll on them, and they were officially shot. After assessing the situation with the flooring, it became clear that the original wood floors weren’t salvageable. I may have cried a fair amount as I watched them being piled up for trash.

This next picture is hard to look at. If you can’t stand seeing antique hardwood floors being destroyed, look away my friend …look away.

Before they were hauled away, I grabbed as many boards as I could fit in my truck (hoping to be able to use them on another project.) For now, those planks are stored away in my garage.

What I Chose Instead:

Fast forward several weeks and I contacted Impressions Hardwood Collection, a local flooring distributor, about being a Saving Etta sponsor. I explained to them my predicament and they graciously invited me to their local office to see the samples of their flooring. With so many beautiful options to choose from, I knew it would be hard to make a decision. But, I brought two pieces of salvaged flooring from Etta to try to find something that would be fitting of a house built in 1900.

As I began looking through all the beautiful samples, two stood out from the rows of new shiny wood flooring. I pulled them and saw that they were both from the Elegance series. The grain on the wood was beautiful and the finish was almost an imperceptible flat finish.

Chris explained to me that the Elegance series is wire brushed to enhance the grain and it has a low luster finish.

I was instantly in love with the Elegance flooring because it looked old, not shiny or new.

Both the wheat and flint colors looked similar to Etta’s original flooring. Ultimately, I chose the Flint color (the darker of the two) because it has that dark aged wood look. I could not be happier with this decision. Suddenly, what had been a dark cloud over the flooring loss, became a silver lining after discovering this beautiful solid wood flooring. As a bonus, I was thrilled to be partnering with a local family-owned flooring distributor who offers quality flooring to their customers.

Wood Flooring  Installation:

As you know from the last Saving Etta update, the tile floors were being installed while the Elegance Series wood floors acclimated to the house. Why is this important? Impressions Hardwood has a great blog post explaining why you don’t install wood floors right after delivery.

After the delivery of the flooring, I couldn’t wait to rip open the boxes and gaze on them.

After ten days (and after the tile floors were in), it was finally time to install these beauties! I hired a local flooring contractor to install the wood floors and they did a phenomenal job.

Of course, I had to resist the urge to clean off those sawdust foot prints until the job was complete.

Pretty impressive when the living room view transitioned from this:

to this in a few days:

I leave you to drool over these beautiful photos of the Impressions Hardwood Collection Elegance Series solid wood flooring in Flint stain color.

They look so good against the vintage hex tiles! Both look like they could be original to the house, right?!

But, hey, look here! They go great with modern tiles too!

And this photo legit makes my heart skip a beat! The new floors with the original pine door from 1900. I can’t handle how gorgeous they look together (even though people will talk, saying that door is a cougar and way too old for that young handsome floor. LOL.)

Are you in love with these solid wood floors? Can you forgive me for having to ditch the original floors? Have you seen all the other flooring options Impressions Hardwood Collection has to choose from?

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post for Impressions Hardwood Collection in exchange for their sponsorship of the Saving Etta project. I was not told what to write. All opinions and ideas are my own. As always, I am very particular about the brands I choose to work with. You will always be notified if you are reading a sponsored post.