When building a home, no matter if it's your first time or you have done this heaps, there is always new flooring products on the market and if get your floor decisions wrong your house can go from designer home to just average.
Oceanfront home with amazing floors
In helping one of our clients move into their new oceanfront home, their flooring decisions came out perfect and it really helped me consider some new ideas and or products that I might have not thought of using when I next build myself.
Flooring option that gives a designer look
When you start off a new home building project people will often jump onto Pinterest and start to build up all these wonderful ideas and often when you go back to your builder they either say it's not available, it has these challenges or risks or it simply not within your price budget. This can be disheartening but while these clients were building an oceanfront dream home, there was still a budget to consider and they managed to find some good flooring options that helped them get the designer look they wanted but save some money. In particular, I found their wood flooring selection to be unique and something that made their overall house design really stand out.
Bamboo flooring a better option than hardwood
Our client had deliberated over getting hardwood floors, as prior to this house they had tiled floors but overall loved the look of hardwood floors, but was concerned about how durable they would be long-term especially with a dog, heavy items and being by the ocean.
They told us after looking at the hardwood option, that was actually triple the price and way more maintenance needed, they settled on strand woven bamboo flooring. A key reason they chose this product, was how attractive (very similar to hardwood flooring) and strong it was meant to be, even more so than Hardwood flooring.
When they approached us to move into their new home, their first concern, understandably, was how would we move heavy items due to their wood floors. We have techniques for all floor types to ensure there is no damage to them but when it came to moving day, we were impressed at how hard and durable the bamboo floors were. The moving day went perfect and there was no damage to their floor. And while no move day goes 100% to plan these bamboo floors held up to some unexpected minor hits. Something we both were thankful for.
So if you're considering going for wood flooring for your next home, I can not fault the bamboo floor this client used. They had floating floors with a product called Natural Strand Bamboo Flooring. It definitely seemed to have a superior hardness over hardwood and I have spoken to the client 2 years down the track and the floors are still in perfect condition (that's with no special maintenance either).
Overall it's definitely made me rethink what I would use on my floors when I start my next house building project.
