The Office Before & Flooring Selection

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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