Its Jess B here. While Jess has been busy with her new house, I have been consumed with my own house renovation.  I had good intentions of writing along with the progress but I’m way behind in posts as life, work, kids… got in the way. Excuses aside, I thought it would be helpful to write a series of articles on the house decisions that really kept me up at night.

First on my list was choosing the floor color.   All the inspiration images I gravitated toward were of dark wood.  I knew my 8-foot ceiling entry wouldn’t magically transform into the showstoppers below but I loved the drama and contrast.
 
What worried me was the maintenance.  Would the dark floors show every speck of dust?

I had my contractor put a bunch of combinations on the floor to help me decide.
Looking at the image, the left two were also “water popped.”  Basically, the floor is damped before stain is apply to help deepen and darken the color.  Of course, I gravitated toward those two.  The dark walnut/ebony mix read more brown and the Jacobean/ebony seemed a bit cooler.

The next day I came back to the house and I got a good idea of what the floors would look like dirty.
Ok, its not really a fair true to life test.  I had my mind made up anyway.  My design concept was too strong to compromise and decided to have the floors water popped with the 50% Ebony/50% Jacobean mix.  

Here is the final result.
 
I am beyond thrilled with the results.  The floors are deep and rich without feeling too dark. Please ignore the unfinished state of the rooms.  I’ll post lots more photos when everything is put together.