The floors are done. Construction is going quickly and well, but it sure feels nice to have one major task completed. As I mentioned in my “before” post, the spray-tan orange floors were one of the things about our new Chelsea loft that we most wanted to change. We loved their lived-in (well, actually, beat-up) character that reflected the building’s industrial history, but, with the exposed brick, the color was just too much.
We sanded off the finish and then tried several options, including just sealing the bare floors, staining them brown, painting them a warm gray and a applying a more opaque dark chocolate brown stain.
After sanding a few spots, we were intrigued with leaving the floors their natural color and allowing all of the nail holes, cracks and gaps to show. We had to abandon this approach, though, because of large oil spots (probably leaked from machinery) in some very prominent areas. (You can see one in the foreground of second picture below.)
I also liked the idea of gray floors (as did many of you), but this proved infeasible as well: a transparent gray stain didn’t cover the oily patches, and the gray paint seemed to drain the life out of the space. With our contractor’s advice, we concluded that gray would only work if we first covered the floors with new white oak and then applied a transparent stain. We rejected this too, both because of the expense and because it would wipe out a lot of the apartment’s essential character. We also decided against the medium browns –to us, they felt dull and unsophisticated.
This left us with the dark chocolate brown that you see above. We’re pleased with it. I particularly like the way the dark floors ground the space and crisply set off the brick walls. To me, they make the apartment feel larger, cooler and cleaner.
Master Bedroom Floor Before
Master Bedroom Floors Sanded Bare
Master Bedroom Floor with New Finish
And the finish isn’t so dark and shiny as to completely obscure the grain of the wood or a century’s worth of wear and tear.
We only had a few hours to enjoy our new floors, though. As soon as they were dry, they were covered with construction paper and protection board so work on everything else could resume.
Like tearing out the last of those clunky soffits, and framing the new doorways, and installing the new ductwork, and relocating the sprinklers, and . . . .
Soffit-free Master Bedroom
