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Life On Virginia Street

Life On Virginia Street

DIY . Home Decor . Travel . Style . Life

The Office Before & Flooring Selection

Decorating Ideas, Tips and Trends, Room Makeovers + Design Plans

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I am sharing our before the makeover office plus our new hardwood floors!

I partnered with Mannington and Nebraska Furniture Mart on this project. Although I was not compensated, a portion of the product and installation costs were provided to me.  As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Our home office is the room I most likely spend the most amount of time in. I think it’s also the most highly Pinned room in our home on Pinterest. AND, I think it’s the room that has undergone the most decor changes since we’ve lived here in nearly five years.

Tomorrow is the big reveal of our updated office, including the gorgeous new hardwood floors we chose. But first, I thought it would be fun to show the history of the home office over the past nearly-five years and give you some insight on my flooring selection.

When we first moved in, the office had a brown feature wall with the remaining walls painted in the same flat, beige color the rest of the house was painted. The trim and doors were all painted an almond color that I knew would eventually need to be white. Even though this room is right off our entryway, it housed some of our furniture that didn’t have a home at the time. We were also using the drapes that came with the house, since the office is the only room on our main floor that faces the street.

Our office when we moved in with brown walls.

A view of our office with tan walls and floral curtains.

In May of 2013, I decided to paint the office Behr Castle Path like several of the other rooms in our home. I loved how much lighter and brighter it felt, but the reality is, I still didn’t really have a plan for the space. We also added a huge wood desk we got for free from my day-office. We updated it with new trim and I painted it with chalk paint.

Lightened up walls in our office using Behr's Castle Path paint.

In the winter of 2014, we shared our first official “reveal” when we added board and batten to the office and painted it in a contrasting color (Sherwin Williams Urbane Bronze). I also made some drapes, a DIY “wood” bead chandelier, and a DIY abstract art piece.

Our office with a dramatic board and batten wall painted in Behr's Urbane Bronze along with pops of blue and green.

The last version of the office I officially shared was when I painted the board and batten Benjamin Moore Hale Navy once Kurtis declared that the office needed to be a shared space. This meant removing the huge white desk I had, and replacing it with two smaller desks. It wasn’t ideal for “blog purposes” but it made sense from a practical work standpoint.

Board and batten wall in Benjamin Moore Hale Navy with two desks (for a more practical office space).

I then shared a slightly updated version of the room once our new light, stunning artwork and chairs were added, in our 2016 fall home tour.

Our office with Benjamin Moore's Hale Navy paint on the board and batten wall. We added a light fixture and new artwork.

For a few years, we’ve known that we wanted to replace the carpet in the office with hardwood floors. The office was the only room on our main floor with carpet (other than the carpet inset in our living room). And, as you can see in the photo above and below, the carpets were not in great shape and had odd discolorations from buckling and the heavy desk that we had in there previously. The entrance to the room with carpet was loose and buckling as well.

Our tan carpet had buckling and was ready for a replacement. This was our only carpeted room.

The carpet was buckling particularly badly near the door frame.

When we set about looking for new floors, we knew there was likely no way we could match our nearly-ten-year-old dark hand scraped oak floors we have throughout our main level. The planks were varying widths of 2-5″ and it was a fairly unique flooring look. Not only that, the dark glossy floors have been a nightmare to keep clean with our cats. We ultimately decided something lighter but with a similar grain pattern would be ideal.

So, I turned to Mannington for some hardwood flooring options. You my recall we used them for the solid surface floors in our last rental home, and we were really happy with the quality. Turns out, they also have a gorgeous selection of hardwoods as well! Below, you can see some of the samples I ordered.

Testing the Mannington hardwood floor options against our board and batten navy wall.

I originally thought I wanted to lay whatever floors I chose in a herringbone pattern. But, then I fell in love with the color and look of the 7″ Maison Normandy (Bistro color) hardwood floors. It’s a White Oak solid hardwood and I absolutely loved the tone of the color and the matte finish. I felt the planks were a bit wide to go with a pattern, but I knew they’d still look amazing laid traditionally in our office. It’s the wood shown above on the left in the front row, and then again below.

A closeup of the Mannington Hardwood Maison Normandy Bistro floors.

And because I know some of you will want every little detail, I think this next image includes nearly all the info you should need to make your decision!

A closeup of the detailed information on the Mannington Hardwood Maison Normandy Bistro floors.

I met with some reps at Nebraska Furniture Mart, a local furniture/flooring company that carries the product, and discussed the pros and cons of the flooring. I could tell immediately it was perfect for us. Because it is oak, it is extremely durable, but unlike our dark oak floors that came with the house, these wouldn’t show dirt (or cat hair!!) nearly as much. But the wood grain would have a similar vibe because it was still in the oak family. Since we used Nebraska Furniture Mart to install the hardwoods in our prior home, we felt more than comfortable with the quality of their installers and were excited to get started!

There were some minor delays because of the custom floor vents we ordered. However, I am so glad we waited to ensure they were inset to match our floors. It makes such a difference in the space, and worth every penny we paid to have them match! For reference, I believe we paid about $100 per floor vent (we had three) but they look so good and it’s hard to believe they weren’t just built on-site because they match so well!

Ceiling Paint

Because of the delays, I took the opportunity to paint the ceiling (which was so not white) along with all the trim, and then the walls that were Behr Castle Path. I didn’t want the wall color competing with the new floors. Additionally, I knew the trim would need to be painted once the primed quarter-round was installed with the floors. So, I went all in. Guys, this took so much time. I ultimately had to do three coats of paint on the walls and three on the trim to get it to cover. So much work, but so worth it in the end. The walls are Benjamin Moore Simply White in Eggshell, and the trim is the same color in semi-gloss. The ceiling is just the out-of-the-can Valspar ceiling paint.

Update to the ceiling with Valspar Ceiling Paint right out of the can.

Updating the walls with white paint before we put in the floors.

Cutting in the details of our office paint job.

Painting the French Doors to our office before the flooring update.

The installers that worked the office were the same ones that did the solid surfaces in our rental home, so I was really happy about that! When I walked by and saw these first few rows of flooring, I was geeking out.

The flooring installation in progress.

This is a really terrible iPhone photo, but at this point when I saw the vents with the floors, I knew it was all worth the wait! So much better than typical white metal vents!
Check out the detail on those matching vents--so worth it!

I hate to leave you all waiting in suspense, but tomorrow I’ll be sharing the full room reveal and all of the sources and close-ups of those gorgeous floors! UPDATE: SEE THE REVEAL HERE!!! The room is officially 100% painted and styled and a few other fun changes have been made. I’m hoping you’ll think the reveal is worth the wait, like I do! We couldn’t be happier with how it ultimately turned out!

If you would like to follow along on more of my home decor, DIY, lifestyle, travel and other posts, I’d love to have you follow me on any of the following:

Pinterest / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter / Google+

disclosure: some affiliate links used

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August 14, 2017 · 9 Comments

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Comments

  1. Linda Grubbs says

    August 14, 2017 at 8:50 am

    Looking forward to tomorrows reveal!! Looking awesome so far…….really excellent choice on the floors…and those vents, very nice! I’m a little nervous though now…worried that everything in your house is completed and you’ll have no more updating to do!!…

    Reply
    • Sarah says

      August 14, 2017 at 10:48 am

      Haha! Trust me, there are still plenty of projects left 😉 And thank you! We love the floors so much too!

      Reply
  2. Maren says

    August 14, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Can’t wait to see it! I’m sure it’ll be beautiful! I’m not sure if you mentioned this before or not, but what “white” did you use for paint? There are SO many!!

    Reply
    • Sarah says

      August 14, 2017 at 10:47 am

      Sorry about that! I just updated the post with the info. But I used BM Simply White on the walls and trim (eggshell and semi-gloss, respectively). The ceiling is just Valspar’s ceiling paint (untinted).

      Reply
  3. Linda Grubbs says

    August 14, 2017 at 10:40 am

    I was also going to ask about the white paint. I KNOW you stated in here somewhere…..cannot find it right now. 🙂
    Thanks so much… I too always look forward to your posts.

    Reply
    • Sarah says

      August 14, 2017 at 10:47 am

      Sorry about that! I just updated the post with the info. But I used BM Simply White on the walls and trim (eggshell and semi-gloss, respectively). The ceiling is just Valspar’s ceiling paint (untinted).

      Reply
  4. sarah says

    November 25, 2017 at 8:48 pm

    hi sarah.
    we are considering these floors. how are they holding up!

    Reply
    • Sarah says

      November 26, 2017 at 9:51 am

      They have held up great! We love them so much!

      Reply
      • sarah says

        December 1, 2017 at 3:48 pm

        Thank you so much. we are redoing a lot of square feet. its sooo hard to decide with a little sample!!

        Reply

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