The Dappled Willow

This week saw some new developments and challenges. I had given them a little thought and minimal research but when I mentioned them to Daniel he sprang to action.

Floors

When we demolished the wall between the closet and pantry it left a hole in the linoleum floor. I knew we would have to do something about it but I figured we would cross that bridge when we get there. Daniel is a planner, he is a professional project manager after all, and prefers to have everything figured out before we start projects (I’m learning and working on being better prepared). We decided we needed new flooring, but what kind?

We settled on Vinyl Plank pretty quickly for it’s durability, waterproof properties, and ease of DIY installation. We visited a few flooring stores, found a good product in a colour we liked that was in stock and thankfully Daniel was able to negotiate a great price. We made the decision without bringing home a sample but thankfully it’s a winner and will go nicely in our home.

After my Dad saw the colour of the planks he suggested we keep the parquet floors in our living room and dining room since the stain went well with them. We had already purchased enough flooring to cover the entirety of the main floor and hadn’t considered any other option.

I shared the question, “Should we keep the parquet?” in my stories on Instagram and Facebook and got quite a variety of responses. Most respondents to my poll said “No way!” but there were some passionately telling me to keep them.

The pros to keeping the parquet are many. They are real hardwood and stained a rich, warm, dark brown which matches the parquet of the bedrooms. Not covering the parquet would mean we could keep all that character and save on the flooring costs by returning the boxes for those square feet. Not to mention all the time we would save too!

On the other hand, having continuous flooring throughout the main floor would make the rooms feel bigger and flow into each other better. It’s also apparently better for resale value as continuous flooring is the norm now.

After going back and forth about the pros and cons on both sides we’ve settled on…. covering the parquet. The planks will float on top of them and if we regret it we can take them up down the road. If we’re doing the floor we might as well do it all and see how we like it.

Daniel has taken up the linoleum and evened out the subfloor where the mudroom built-ins will go so I can continue with the build on an even and solid surface. Hopefully we can start laying plank soon.

Crown

I mentioned to Daniel I wanted to try framing out the built-ins with crown moulding at the ceiling so he came home with the materials that night. The pieces were quite long and very awkward to store. To keep them from getting damaged by kids at play, Daniel wanted to get them up as soon as possible.

He got the front pieces up lickety-split but we haven’t had time to figure out the dead-end returns because we’ve had a busy Mother’s Day weekend. We went fishing and had fun in the sun with family, but we’ll be back to projects soon!

Cheers,

Lydia

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