The Perfect Grey Wood Floor Stain

We are t-minus thirty days until the move and are working away on the list of to-dos for the new house.  As we work on this list I’m realizing that the alternate title for this post should be “And This is How Things Snowball.”   Right now we are walking the line between sticking to our budget and “aw forget it, let’s just get it done before we move in.”  So here is our list of priorities, as well as our list of would-really-like-to-haves, AND our desperate plea for a vote in our search for the perfect grey wood floor stain.  Let’s get this reno party started people!

 

Renovation To-Do List

 Sand and stain wood floors in kitchen, family room, foyer, living room, and hall.    Pro tip…  the quarter round – that little wooden trim piece where the baseboard meets the floor – is a sneaky extra cost.  With any new floor (except carpet) you likely need new quarter round and this stuff is a bitch to install and is expensive!  In our current Suburbialand house it ended up and cost another $750 at the end of our project and we soooo were not in the mood for that.  Plus it’s one of the last little detail things when you’re sooooo ready to be done.  Don’t love quarter round.

Replace kitchen countertops (and possibly countertops in all bathrooms).  We started off saying we’d just replace the countertops in the kitchen, which are currently granite, but a fugly orangey brown variety, which definitely does not go with the pretty white cabinets and the soon-to-be greyish wood floors.  Plus we just got way too spoiled with that fancy schmancy leather finish granite in this house.  Then we were like, “wellllll as long as the granite guys are herrrrre….” and we got them to quote all the bathrooms too.

Luckily we’ve worked with this granite guy before and he’s given us free reign of his remnants for the smaller vanities, so we’ll see how the budget goes on that, but considering the fact that we’ve already purchased new faucets for all the bathrooms that won’t fit the holes that are in the current countertops…

And if we’re replacing the bathroom countertops, we should probably just go ahead and paint those cabinets too, huh?

As long as the painter is there we should definitely have him take down those grody ceramic towel bars – why are there so many old owners?  why?! – and patch and paint the giant holes that removing these atrocities will leave behind.  #snowballing

Fence.  And since this ginormous lot backs up to the golf course, the fence must be the expensive black aluminum kind.  We’re figuring we need about 250 linear feet, and that is only because we can save about 100 feet by tying into our neighbors fence on one side.  All this for our little Craybelle.  Woof.

Frame out and paint weird area above fireplace in family room.  There is a very strange shelf and window above the mantle in the fireplace.  It has to go so that 70″ LED TV can take over.  And since the framer will be there…  he should probably just take a look at the master bathroom entrance so he can maybe frame that out for the barn door we’re going to build, riiiiiiiiight?

Paint Lila’s Room.  It’s currently a dark blueish color and that will not work for my princess.  I gathered about 470 color samples at Lowe’s today.  I’m leaning towards a Lilac-ish color, or possibly a greyish-seafoamish color.  I will be soliciting advice for that in an upcoming post for sure.

Replace weird/wobbly fans and light fixtures.  They’re everywhere.  This will add up.

Replace kitchen backsplash.  My original plan was to use some amaaaaazing peel and stick stainless octagon tiles that I got as a freebie from the Haven Conference from Aspect tiles.  However, if we replace the countertop, they will rip off the random 2″ granite backsplash piece, which will leave a weird gap between the existing backsplash tile and the new countertop and a peel and stick application will not work.  Soooooo, as long as they have the countertops off, we may as well go ahead and rip the backsplash out, right?  And if we rip the backsplash out then we may as well go ahead and add wired under cabinet lights instead of the peel and stick strip LED thing that’s there now…  SEE what I mean about the snowballing?!

Replace all hardware – cabinet and door.  The kitchen cabinets currently have what I like to call “pocket rippers” for hardware.  The way the ends stick out, they truly do rip pockets.  No thanks.  The door hardware is shiny brass and y’all I just can not.  This is another creeper of a cost because door handles themselves are about $25-$30 each and we have sixteen doors.  That’s $500 without the hinges.  Yikes.

I think that covers the big things.  Of course Lane Jones has big plans for a pool in that giant yard, but that will come soon enough.

So now on to my begging you all for a vote on this wood floor color.  The wall color that it will go with is a very light blue/seafoamy kind of color.

We want a coastal feel, but not over the top beachy.  Not too dark, not too light.  The Goldilocks of wood floor stains, if you will.  We learned about a product called Monocoat, which as the name implies, only requires one coat and has low/no VOCs (volatile organic compounds, a.k.a. the fumes!) and has a quick cure time.  All of this is very important to us since time will be of the essence, and also they have a huge color selection.  So without further ado…

More to come on the renovation and the big move!  It’ll be here before we know it.