Flooring Renovation Realness: Everything Bagel Carpet & Beyond

Don’t worry, that chandelier gets the boot. :)

One of the very first things we needed to tackle in this house was the flooring. The main floor had travertine in the high traffic areas and what I lovingly refer to as “everything bagel” carpet due to its’ speckled nature, in the living, family, dining and guest room.

All of the flooring was original circa 1988 and had seen much, much better days. The carpet was in especially bad shape, fraying at some of the transitions and creating a sharp surface to walk on, hence the small rug below. Not ideal, especially with kids running around. To say it was time for a change is an understatement.

The Process

Starting with the travertine, everything was ripped out and the underlying concrete floor had to be evened out, sanded and smoothed. THE DUST. The dust was the absolute worst part of the whole process. Not the fact that we moved all of the downstairs furniture to the garage, lived upstairs for the duration, not the noise from the demo and sanding but THE DUST.

I would definitely not choose to live through that part of renovations again. Below you can see the dust just hanging out in the air.

You can also see why the concrete needed to be leveled out. There were a lot of spots just like these where it was uneven and really rough from the travertine demo. Here are some more shots of the unfinished floor and a peek of the kitchen cabinets being painted. What better time to paint, no drop cloth required!

Now the fun part, which flooring did we go with?

New Flooring

I knew I wanted a hardwood look and after shopping around we decided on the Floorte’ luxury vinyl. It’s waterproof which is great coming in from the pool, great for the kid’s inevitable messes as well as the pup’s. I felt this color was the perfect neutral, white oak-looking without being too red, yellow, etc. We’ve been very happy with our choice!

Here’s where we started…

And a little renovation realness for ya…

Getting there and looking so much better…

The difference this new flooring makes is incredible. It really made the house look and feel more up to date and laid a nice neutral base for our furniture and decor.

So what did we do once those beautiful floors were in? Cover them up for painting of course! We painted the whole house a nice, clean white and painted the stair railings black. What a huge change that made.

I’ll leave you with one last satisfying before & after…

Have you renovated flooring before? I would love to hear how it went!

Best,