Well, we braved the wet cold and spent this past Saturday looking at options for hardwood floors and counter tops for both bathrooms and the kitchen.
The wood floor choice, which I thought would be the tough decision, was made in about 10 minutes. Home Depot to the rescue. We ended up with a medium-dark elm, hand scraped elm with the special coating - I know it has a name - that protects against scuffs and scratches. I think we looked at 2 options and narrowed in on this choice within a minute.
Stone for counter tops proved to be a bit more of a challenge. Nature provides for way too many wonderful options. I really was unprepared for the vast number of colors, patterns and textures of granite and marble. As we walked down aisle after aisle of stone slabs, I easily could think of uses for every color and pattern I saw. Beautiful stuff.
We did, however, write down about 4 choices, all in the gray/blue family. Apparently, gray has replaced earth tones as the new "it" color of choice for tiles and counter tops. Who knew? We are reviewing the colors and hope to narrow down the final choice next week. Since we have to buy the entire slab, which is huge, we are considering using the same stone for the counter tops in both bathrooms. We will choose a different option for the kitchen. All four choices are granite - we really wanted to stay natural (pretty, more eco-friendly and lower maintenance than the processed products).
Stay tuned. I will post again next week when we make our final choices and set the start date.
