Finally! The Nasty Carpet is Going Away

We’ve lived in our house for 8 years, and we’ve slowly been replacing the nasty brown carpet that is installed up our semi-circular staircase and all through the upper floor. Hubby and I (mostly hubby) lay down bamboo in my sewing room 4 years ago. 2 summers ago we did the boys bedroom and playroom. But for eight years, I’ve been walking on really old, brown carpet in my bedroom, and our circular stairs, which could look stunning, instead are a big throwback to the 70’s!


I’ve been a very good wife (LOL!), and I’ve been batting my eyes a lot, and so this month, the carpet is leaving! We went to Lumber Liquidators on Saturday and came home with a huge truckload of flooring. I’ve been agonizing over the decision of what wood to go with for quite some time. I love the look when you’ve got the same flooring running from room to room, so I really have been thinking we’d do the bamboo throughout. Here are the doors to the other rooms up here:

BUT! I just could NOT envision bamboo stairs in my house! My New England roots love the look of darker wood treads with white – I spent some time assembling a Pinterest board of wooden staircases to make sure, but yup, I really do love the darker wood with white.

Usually when I take pictures of my house, I try my hardest to NOT show the floor, I’ve now taken a bunch of pix so I can remember how yucky this stuff was! (Please note, these pictures do not convey how matted they are and how sticky they feel on bare feet!)

Here’s the hallway into our bedroom (there’s my newly organized closet on the right):

Our bedroom is really quite big. We’ve got a beautiful cherry/maple bed Andrew’s parents gave to us for a wedding present 20 years ago. Andrew made the side tables and lamps, also both maple & cherry. But the rest of the bedroom is kindof a mismosh of random furniture that doesn’t have any other place to go!

Look, you can see my sewing room when the door is open!

Between this project and Dyeing 102, I’m gonna be really busy this month! So I’m going to try to blog on the progress, a sort of visual diary. Unlike the other floors we’ve done, this is not gonna be a couple of days and done. This curved staircase is going to take a lot of fussy detail work!

Yup, that is a LOT of wood! Even before we bought it, Andrew had to do some excavation to see how the stairs are put together.

We ended up going with Brazilian Cherry from BellaWood:

I still am worried about the dark/light transitions, and hope it won’t make the hall look too small, but it sure is lovely and I know the stairs will look va-va-va-voom! Wish us LUCK!!!

5 Responses

  1. Candy, My husband and I bought our current home about a year and a half ago. The carpet is the ugly builder basic from when the house was built 11 years ago and I can’t wait to get rid of it. I have already replaced the floors in my sewing room, and the 2 other bedrooms with woodgrain laminate. I plan to replace much of the carpet in the rest of the house with tile as I have done in 2 previous homes, but now that I am older, I am having a hard time coming up the with the motivation to do it.
    I look forward to seeing the progress/completion of the stairway.
    Thanks for sharing!
    ~June

  2. Having been through the whole flooring renovation thing in 2007 and then again last year when the leaking dishwasher rotted the timber floor I sympathise but I also know how exciting it can be! Good luck with it all.

  3. I lived with all those boxes for a summer a few years back. It has been so worth every roadblock those boxes created, the labyrinth of getting from one room to another. I love my wood floors. Love, love, love them.