I’ve been thinking about all the different projects we’ve done around the condo and have been trying to determine which project I should feature first – there are so many to choose from! As I was searching through my inbox today, I stumbled upon pictures I sent to my mom when we installed the new floors and thought to myself this is the perfect place to start!
Before:
Here’s a before picture with the carpet and basic baseboards.
This project took us two full days to complete it, but we did plenty of the prep work during the week so we could hit the ground running first thing Saturday morning (I really don’t know how the TV shows seem to pull these projects off in the crazy timeframes they say they do!).
During the week we shifted all of the furniture to one room so we could start pulling up the carpet and laying down the moisture barrier. By Saturday morning we were able to draw the chalk line and start laying the floor, it took us all day, but we finished the entire condo by Saturday night (I’m talking late Saturday night!) This left us with cutting, priming, patching and painting the new baseboards on Sunday. It was definitely a long weekend as we pushed to get it all done in two days, but we did it! And I love it!
Because I have a tendency to lean towards dark wood furniture and the condo is limited with it’s natural light, I decided to go with a lighter wood. We ended up matching the color to the kitchen cabinets and going with 5 inch wide plank with the padding already attached to the back.
The floors are an engineered hardwood laminate, Nantucket Beech from Lumber Liquidators, by purchasing flooring that already had the pad attached, it eliminated an additional step!
As you can see in this comparison photo of the light and dark wood, the one on the left reflects the light whereas the darker floor absorbs it, this would of made the condo seem smaller and darker, rather than opening it up. And this was a really difficult decision for me as I love the way dark wood floors look, but I thought it would be best to not make the space appear darker than it already is.
After:
This was taken right after we finished adding the new baseboards, we still had a bunch of work to finish up.
An up-close shot of the new colonial baseboards, the trim work and the height made a huge difference in the space!
If you’re wondering when we changed out the appliances in the kitchen during the install, we didn’t. I wanted to take a better “after” picture, so I just took one! We’ve done a lot of projects since then, but more on those other projects later!
What do you think of the finished product? If you had a condo with limited natural light would you do the dark wood or stay with the lighter one?
