Waterproof Laminate Barnwood Flooring Reveal
Today I'm sharing before and after pictures of the new Barnwood waterproof flooring we installed in our dining room, sitting room, hallway and stairs!
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Hey friend, our new flooring is finally installed and ready to share! Not gonna lie, this project is a doozie, especially if stairs are involved! However, as our parents used to say, "nothing worth having is easy," right?! And all the hard work was so totally worth it!
In fact, we love our new floors so much we're about to install them in our 3 bedrooms too...but that's a whole other post! Today I'm going to share some before pictures, in progress (messy) pictures and finally the beautiful reveal!
The before - shiny orange floors
First things first. The before. The ugly. The fake wood floors in the front of our home were just not our style! Lots of orange tones, narrow planks and that shiny finish that was so popular in the 90's! I did my best to disguise them, but there's a reason I didn't share many pictures of these rooms. Let's take a look.
I can tell this is an old picture because the room at the back still has carpet. Two years ago, we ripped out the carpet in our living room, sunroom and my office and installed affordable, gorgeous laminates. You can read more about the installation (as well as before and after pictures) if you click here. To see the beautiful reveal pictures of our living room, click here. To see how the new floors look in my office click here.
These beautiful new floors made a HUGE difference in the look and feel of our home! They added warmth, farmhouse style and I get asked questions about them all the time!
Flooring secret
Here's my little secret...our floors are laminates from Sam's Club! Not only are they crazy affordable, but they rival hand-scraped hardwoods (which we have had in a previous home!). They are warm and soft on the feet, there is no clicking when you walk on them, and no glue was involved in the installation! We installed 'Driftwood' from the Select Surfaces Elite Collection, which has been so popular that's it's often sold out online!
Waterproof laminate floors
That picture above is from two years ago. We love these floors so much that we decided the shiny orange floors in the front of our home needed to finally be replaced! That little quarantine period we were forced into seemed like a perfect time to get this job done.
The Elite Collection floors that we used 2 years ago are great, but while they're moisture resistant, they cannot be wet mopped. Lucky for us, they recently introduced the Spill Defense Collection of laminates which can be wet mopped! 😀 (I can hear all you cleaning fanatics cheering!)
The Spill Defense Collection laminates are waterproof for 24 hours and engineered to have a tighter locking joint than regular laminates so they have no problem withstanding everyday spills which makes them ideal for kitchens, bathrooms, dining rooms and other high traffic areas.
But wait...it gets even better...they matched many of the previous shades from the older collection!! We picked Barnwood from the Spill Defense Collection, which is an exact match to Driftwood (that we have in other areas of our home).
Here's a picture to show you how perfectly they match.
Getting started
Tearing out the old floors was fairly quick and easy. We left the blue foam backing in place because it was already cut to size to fit each room.
Mr DIY and our son Kyle did a fantastic job lining up the new flooring with the floors we THEY (let's be serious!) installed two years ago. Hey, there's a little peak of my babe hard at work 😉
Laying the floors down the hall and in the two front rooms went fast, but then came the stairs...
Our stairs were especially tricky because of all the moldings that needed to be removed in order for the floor to be flush on either side. I'm not even going to go into the rest of the ordeal because the learning curve was so steep 😕 It was messy and just plain hard. If you follow me on Instagram, you got a sneak peak as I shared our progress (and frustrations) in my stories! I still have some touch-up painting to do.
But they got done and look fantastic! Here's a look at the before, during and after.
The stairs look even better from the top.
The banisters probably need to be a shade darker...and less orange-y. I'm looking at a water based stain from General Finishes that I might use, but I'd probably have to mix a couple different ones to get the right shade. What do you think? Worth the effort, or just leave the banisters as they are?
Reveal pictures
Welcome to our home, where the floors all match! It is so nice to open our front door and see these beautiful floors extending throughout our home in all directions!
To the left is our sitting room which has never looked better!!
On the other side of the stairs is our dining room. Yep, those banisters definitely need to be darker!
I removed the bamboo mat we had in the dining room before because it was blocking too much of the beautiful floor!
I also moved my dining table sideways and scooted the black hutch a little to the left to make room for the table in this orientation. It probably won't stay this way for long, but it's fun to make temporary changes that make a room feel fresh!
It feels so airy and uncluttered in here! Ready for summer! 🍋
Here's another little peak at our new floors compared to the old. So much more modern and farmhouse-friendly right?
I'd love to know what you think of these floors! Are waterproof laminates in your future? Make sure to check out the entire collection of Select Surfaces laminates here.
Pin for reference
Be watching for these floors to make an appearance in our bedrooms in an upcoming post! Hope you're staying safe and healthy!! ❤
bringing beauty to the ordinary,
Yes darker on stairs railing. Love the new floor. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, I appreciate your input!
DeleteYour "team" :) did an AMAZING job on the floors and especially the stairs..wow! Looks so beautiful! Really transformed your space. :) I wonder if the railings would look good painted black? I see you have other black painted furniture in your spaces...might just bring that all together? not sure...but thought I would throw that out there. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, I have a great team!! 😉 I actually considered black for the stairs! Thanks for taking the time to comment!
DeleteThe new floors look fantastic! Great the new color matched exactly with the old.
ReplyDeleteCan't imagine the stairs and issues.
Cindy
Thank you, we are thrilled with them!
DeleteYour floors.... gorgeous! I immediately clicked to start purchasing new floors for my house. We are in desperate need and these would look lovely. THey are just what I want. Then I remembered, we are not flooring shopping just yet. I did keep these in my shopping cart though! You just made my search for new floors so much easier. Thank you! And, yes, the stair railings needed to be darker - which I've seen you've already done. Beautiful work there too!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing your experience and thoughts! I couldn't tell from you photos if your HVAC grills are on the floor or on the ceiling. If they're on the floor, what kind of grill did you go with? We're wanting to match or semi-match our flooring (we also have SS Barnwood).
ReplyDeleteHi Roger, that's a great question! Ours are all on the ceiling so we didn't have to figure that out! I would experiment with different stains to see if you could match the Barnwood floors...on a test piece of course! Good luck
DeleteHi, Did you ever have to contact Select Surfaces customer service? We are having a horrible time with them. We ordered the flooring through Sam's Club and need to order the molding (for stairs and between our existing tile floor) we needed directly from Select Surfaces. When we put the products in our cart and go to check out, the shipping charges are over $600+. Only for the Barnwood. Other colors do not raise the shipping that much. We have contacted them repeatedly via email and left several messages. We just keeping getting the same response. We are beyond frustrated and can't start to install our new floors until we get the moldings. Anyone else have this issue with shipping charges?
ReplyDeleteOh no, I'm sorry you're having this issue! Have you tried to reach them through Sam's Club customer service?
DeleteI have a direct contact with them, maybe I can help. Can u leave your email address here and I'll reach out.
DeleteFYI, I reached out to my contact and she is going to let the tech people know so they can correct that on the website.
DeleteI haven't tried Sam's Club customer service, only directly through SS. I really appreciate you reaching out. It seems to only be an issue for end cap molding in Driftwood/Barnwood. My email address is leimon77@gmail.com. Thank you again! PS - your floors are gorgeous and I can't wait to get mine installed. :)
ReplyDeleteNo problem, happy to help! She's going to get back to me tomorrow and I'll email you the info I find out! Thank you, we really love our floors, they are beautiful to look at, quiet, and so easy to clean!
DeleteThe shipping glitch has been fixed and I was able to order the moldings. Thank you very much for the information and help! I hope you have a wonderful holiday! :)
ReplyDeleteOh good, I'm so glad I could help! Enjoy your new floors and have a wonderful Christmas season!!
DeleteThese floors are absolutely beautiful! We are looking to replace about 1800 sq ft of flooring this year in our rural home that has old yucky carpet! I've been researching laminate vs. vinyl for awhile now. We have two large dogs and I'm concerned about their nails on laminate - have you had any experience with this?
ReplyDeleteThanks!
Sarah
We have a small dog and haven't had any scratching!
DeleteWe are looking to replace our 2900 sq ft home with this. We have 3 yr old dark vinyl plank floors and I HATE it. It's sooo hard to clean. The second it dries their is prints the second the pets and kids walk on by.... plus can only use a neutral ph cleaner I recently found out. So this whole time i was using a crosswave and couldnt 😭 So how do these clean? What do u use? Etc. I fell in love with this color floor at a local sams and really thinking about buying these.
ReplyDeleteYou will love these floors! They show nothing 😉 I use a steam mop to clean, but use the "dust" setting rather than the full steam! This keeps moisture from getting under or between the flooring. For daily cleaning, we have a Roomba
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