(no subject)

[drscott]

Today's interesting event was a trip to the flooring showroom to look at carpet and hardwood options. Our house is 5 beds, 3 baths, organized around a central atrium -- there's a lot of floor. Half of the floors (the kitchen, breakfast area, and halls around the atrium) were tiled in light grey about ten years ago; the living and ining area and bedrooms are carpeted in beige. This was unwise, because the carpet and pad interfere with heat transference from the concrete slab foundation, which is heated by hot water flowing through copper pipes in the winter. So aside from the carpet being a bit past its freshness date, it cuts heating efficiency by 10-20%. So one goal we've had is to replace all the carpeting with either wood or much thinner Berber carpet with special padding that is dense and conducts heat better.

When Mike and I got to the showroom, the woman I had talked to on the phone wasn't there, so we were given a nonsales guy to show us around. He turned out to be a former coworker of Mike's from Sun in Newark, apparently doing purchasing work for the flooring company. After they'd compared career notes, it was off to the sample area.

We found some nice engineered maple flooring (which is a kind of fine plywood with a maple veneer face.) It is desirable to "float" the flooring, meaning not attaching it to the floor but to itself so it can move relative to the concrete below, because this makes it much easier to pull up a piece or two to fix any leaks in the slab which may occur (and we've had to fix some in the past.) Mike had just seen this brand on a house down the street that was open this weekend ($750K for 4 beds and 3 baths, super renovation, if anyone's interested see the listing) and liked it. However, they also had a great deal on a quality brand of bamboo flooring, which has the neutral, nearly grainless tone we like. The bamboo cost about half of what the maple cost, making it competitive with low-end Berber carpet, so we suddenly started to think about getting all the carpet replaced with bamboo instead of just the living/dining area.

So if anyone's lived with or had experience with bamboo flooring, we'd love to hear about it.

Comments

[excessor.livejournal.com]

The website pictures indicated that the house on your street is an example of an Eichler whose owners have not preserved the midcentury feel. What do you think of the upgrades? The kitchen and bathroom look nice and the maple flooring is gorgeous.

I've sent a friend a question about bamboo flooring.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

They've made some mildly off choices -- irregular stone courtyard, overly ornamented kitchen cabinets, flooring with intrusive coloration differences, white painted fireplace (was originally native brick), accent wall colors not in conformance to the original design -- but otherwise not bad; the ceilings are still the original graywashed redwood. This group of Eichlers is actually post-MCM (dating from 1969) so MCM purity is not required.

Eichlers

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I love Eichler homes and have seen pictures of them. There is a book on them that I'd like to have.

I'm in total agreement that if a true MCM, it's got to be oh-riginal as much as possible. I love the MCM look, whether a classic Eichler, or a Neutra home or the such and I'm in heavin.

I do have several furniture pieces. 4 Eames side chairs in parchmant with the eiffel tower legs at my dining table, a yellow plastic yellow shell with the pedistal/tilt base that's at my desk and a Lightolier 3 light pole lamp in the 3 color (gunmetal gray, bone and flamingo shades) design.