When I painted the subfloor on my house red, I had a method for my madness. You see, having been through the construction of two previous houses, I knew how long I would be sweeping water and snow off the floor so I added protection, but also, I knew how long I would be living on the floor until the finished floors were down.
As I stated earlier, my boyfriend is a stone mason. Not just a run-of-the-mill stone layer, but he can do anything with stone. One of my previous homes had a rock floor in the kitchen so I knew I wanted rock in the bathroom and the kitchen. I had never laid a rock floor before, so I wanted to try my wings at it. The bathroom is a small room, so it would be a good place to practice. Shane just so happened to have enough stone “laying around” to do both the bathroom and kitchen 🙂
First I screwed Durarock cement backer board to the floor, then I selected enough rocks of the same thickness to cover the floor, plus some. A real rock mason would use a hammer and chisel to cut the rocks but I just treated it like a jigsaw puzzle and fit the rocks together the way they were without breaking them.
To make up for some of the ummmm….larger grout joints I added broken arrowheads that I’d found on the property. It gives you something to look at while you’re doing your business in the bathroom (ha).
After the bathroom floor was finished, I started on the kitchen floor. Now that I was an expert (jk) I was ready to tackle this pretty large area. I spent several weeks stepping over rocks and going different ways in the kitchen to avoid stepping on wet adhesive, wet grout, and then really nasty smelling sealer, three coats. I didn’t like any of the colors of grout that were in the store so I mixed wood stain with the clear sealer to tone down the grout even more. I liked the finished look.
The first wooden floor to come my way was the bedroom, closet, and pantry floors. A friend had leftover white oak flooring that he wanted out of his storage building. Heck yes I’ll take it off his hands! I’ll store it on my subfloor 🙂
Shane helped get started and once the first few rows were down I took over. It took every ounce of strength to hit that floor nailer with the rubber hammer, but it went down without a hitch and the very last row didn’t have to be trimmed to an odd wedgie shape–that was good!
The next wooden floor to come about was the foyer and dining room. That same friend who had the leftover oak flooring had some rosewood that he had been collecting and saving for years. He used to work for an electrical company and he said that they ordered copper coils from Brazil, and they used rosewood planks for shipping (it’s a renewable resource there). He thought it was pretty so he collected a bunch of it and had it planed and tongue-and-grooved for flooring. For whatever reason, he decided he didn’t want to use it so he asked me if I wanted it. I said “heck yes, I’ll take it”. I started in the foyer not knowing how much there was–I knew there was enough for the foyer though.
After I got the foyer down there were a few boards left over. That same friend called and said he had found some more of the rosewood flooring that I could have. Wow, it was enough for the dining room!
The rosewood is really dark and shows dust and particles really bad, but the price was right and it’s really pretty. Kind of reminds me of the wooden floors in my elementary school, except they were oily and mine aren’t. The rosewood is the flooring on the left in the photo (dining room).
The final floor in the house was the livingroom floor. Shane had a stack of maple lumber in his barn that he asked if I would like to have for my livingroom. What did I say? Heck yes! I’m a lucky girl 🙂 He took it to a friend’s house and had it planed, kiln dried, and tongue and grooved. While I was recovering from surgery (for cancer, it’s all gone 🙂 he installed the floor. I laid on the couch and supervised. It’s gorgeous! The tree was the victim of a tornado that happened several years ago in a nearby community. He got the log and had it sawed into boards and had been saving them in his barn–for me, I guess……
It’s really colorful, as far as wood goes, and is GORGEOUS! It is easy to keep clean and I really, really like it a lot.
Wild Things Farm 
