Everything is so fabulous here

We Have a Floor!*

*OK, half a floor. Three-quarters of a floor. At least a third-of-a-floor, at the time of writing.

Er, we’re in the process of putting down a floor, is what I’m saying… and it’s a long, hard process: for Terry, at least, who’s the one actually doing it. My contribution, meanwhile (And it’s a valuable one, I’m sure you’ll agree…) is to hover around, trying to resist asking when I can clean it, and if he REALLY needs to keep standing on it with those dusty shoes. (YES, is the answer to that one, apparently. And I can clean it when it’s done, and NOT BEFORE. I will wait patiently…)

Luckily, this is not Terry’s first rodeo – er, floor-fitting experience. He laid all of the flooring in our last house, and did the bedroom floor in this one, so he does know what he’s doing. This, however, will be the biggest project flooring he’s tackled so far (As I said, this floor will cover the hall, living room and kitchen…), and it was also one of the more complex ones, because, just look at the length of these planks:

laminate flooring comparison

That’s one of the boards from our last floor next to it, just for comparison. As you can see, the new one (Which is from QuickStep’s appropriately-named ‘Majestic’ range, which they’ve kindly provided us in exchange for a review) is both much lighter AND much longer, so we had to think quite carefully about the visual effect it would have. With our last floor, the planks were laid horizontally – so, if you were standing at the end of the hall, say, you’d see lots of plants, all running from wall-to-wall. With this one, however, we wanted to make the most of those long, wide planks, and lay them vertically, instead, like so:

OK, so it’s obviously not finished here, but you can see the effect, which basically draws your eye down the hall, and makes it look a bit longer. (Also lighter! SO much lighter! And, OK, this photo was taken on a sunny day anyway, but this hallway was always quite dark before, so I’m really pleased with how it’s shaping up, and how clean and fresh it’ll look when it’s done.

Everything is so fabulous here

You’d think the house was almost back to normal… until you pull the camera back a few steps, and see this view, instead:

We’ll get there. Eventually.

As for the kitchen, meanwhile, it’s still floor-less, but I’m pleased to report that the cabinets are now all in place:

We’ve so far resisted peeling off the plastic wrap that’s still covering most of them at the moment: I think we’re going to wait until everything else is done, and then have a grand un-peeling – that’s the kind of thing that basically passes as a “party” in our house right now. Either that, or we’ll just turn into those people who never take the protective wrappers off their furniture, and everyone will secretly hate us: it could go either way.

Other than that, there’s actually not much else to report from this week – not even a spilled bowl of soup, or anything! – so hopefully my next update will contain the Before + After photos: fingers crossed!

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COMMENTS
  • Those long planks look great, and at least with Quick-Step you’re not having to mess about with glueing it all down or anything. Hope you can clean it all soon!

    May 5, 2017
  • Oh goodness, I have such house envy! I love the floor and that hallway looks stunning. I’m renovating at the moment, and I’ve taken a lot of your lessons to mind – so just wanted to thank you for that! I got carpet samples as delivered and rather than just looking at it, I sprinkled some dust on to see what it looked like. The one I would have chosen was a nightmare. I never would have thought to do that without reading your posts, so thank you!

    May 5, 2017
  • The floor is looking fab and so are those cabinets! We have cream cabinets, we will hopefully get white ones when we move house, and find them surprisingly easy to keep clean x

    LuxeStyle

    May 5, 2017
  • Myra Boyle

    REPLY

    It’s looking good and I’m sure will be fab when it’s all finished. Good choice of long planks and pale colour.

    May 5, 2017
  • I love everything – the flooring, and the KITCHEN!! I’m a crazy certified #whiteaddict haha, I wish my kitchen looked like that.

    Charmaine Ng
    Architecture & Lifestyle Blog

    May 5, 2017
  • Brenda

    REPLY

    It will be beautiful when it is all finished!! I have lighter flooring in my house and it really does not show dirt like the darker flooring does. Quick question, in the kitchen, will the flooring run underneath the cabinets, or do you install a kickplate and run the flooring to that? Just curious!

    May 5, 2017
  • We need to re-floor our condo and I am kind of drooling over that flooring. It’s going to have to wait a couple of months, though.

    May 5, 2017
  • Rachael Dickinson

    REPLY

    Looks great. I agree with laying them vertically and drawing the eye. In my previous house I laid it horizontally in my hallway and it did nothing for the look!

    Rachael xox
    http://gatsbyandglamour.blogspot.com

    May 6, 2017
  • Deanna

    REPLY

    I love that floor! What color planks did you get – there are so many choices in that line! I can imagine you standing over Terry just itching to clean behind him??.

    May 7, 2017
    • It’s the Desert Oak light natural, and yes Amber did follow me cleaning for the first couple of days then realized there was no point ?

      May 8, 2017
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