It has taken quite a bit orf researching and information gathering as most well thought out projects do, and I am happy to say that we have chosen and ordered hardwood floors for the upstairs living space as of 2 hours ago!!

Ok so here is a before picture:

The carpet looks fine in the picture, but it does not look great up close, it is 6 years old and was very inexpensive carpet to begin with, and it no longer looks nice.

What you cannot see in this picture is that the carpet in the living room buts up to red oak hardwood flooring in the kitchen/dining room.  When we built this house the orignal plan was for hardwood throughout the main floor, but I asked to have carpet in this living room area.  We had just sold a house that was all hardwood flooring, which we loved, but is hard when you have littles, I wanted an area where I could plop them down with some toys that would be soft landing.

Now that everyone has graduated from toddler-hood, the carpet has done is job and is ready to retire.

Here is what we purchased:

It is an unfinished red oak “select” meaning it has no knots or imperfections, which is what is already in the house size 3 1/4 X 3/4 inch.

We purchased the flooring from Lumber Liquidators, we looked at HOme depot, they did not have it available in unfinished, we also tried to buy from a local small town restoration business but after a week of waiting for a return call, and our tax return money just sitting there in the bank;), we decided on Lumber liquidators.

We have to wait 7-10 days for the flooring to get to our store, then we need to let is “rest” in our house for 7-10 days, 2 weeks being ideal.

Then we can install, sand and clear coat.

We are really excited and I will keep you in the loop for each step!  We are pretty seasoned DIY’er our last house we had to refinish the floors, but we have never actually installed them so this will be new for us.