Flooring Remodel in the Beach House

Would you believe I combined both engineered hardwood and the existing hardwood in our beach house flooring remodel?

That’s right! We used Element Flooring Engineered Hardwood in the new areas and combined it with the old hardwood that already existed in the beach house. We sanded the old hardwood to match the prefinished engineered hardwood and it turned out beautifully. The transition between the two is seamless and I cannot tell the difference!

This is the Element Flooring Napa Valley Sun Bleached, European White Oak in our primary bedroom.

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The Flooring Remodel with New and Existing

When it comes to choosing the perfect flooring for your home, hardwood floors are a classic and timeless option that adds warmth and elegance to any room. However, with so many types of hardwood flooring available, it can be challenging to decide which one is best suited for your needs.

One option that is often misunderstood is engineered hardwood flooring.

I did a lot of research on flooring during our beach house remodel. Since 80% of our home already had hardwood I wanted to see if it was possible to pair our existing flooring with engineered hardwood.

Hardwood Flooring vs. Element Engineered Hardwood

Hardwood Flooring

In the photo of the office above, the hardwood flooring is made of solid wood planks, usually 3/4″ thick, that is milled from a single piece of timber. Hardwood flooring is known for its durability, longevity, and timeless beauty. However, it can be quite expensive, and the installation process can be time-consuming and messy.

And I am always looking for a way to save money and mess!

Engineered Hardwood Flooring

Engineered hardwood flooring, pictured in our primary bedroom above, is made of multiple layers of wood, with a top layer of real hardwood that is bonded to a lower layer of high-quality plywood. The result is a flooring product that looks and feels like traditional hardwood flooring but is more affordable and easier to install.

Element Flooring engineered hardwood is the best of both worlds, the beauty, and durability of traditional hardwood with the technology and sustainability benefits of engineered hardwood.

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Engineered Hardwood Durability

Many people are skeptical of engineered hardwood flooring, assuming that it is not as durable or long-lasting as traditional hardwood flooring. However, this is simply not true.

Here you can see the plywood stairs up to our 3rd-floor deck on the left. The finished stairs are on the right. Don’t they look amazing?

Element Flooring engineered hardwood is designed to withstand the wear and tear of everyday life and can last just as long as traditional hardwood flooring with proper care and maintenance. It is designed to be more stable than traditional hardwood flooring.

This is the new bedroom downstairs, referred to as the bunk room, where we installed Element engineered flooring. It looks so incredible!

Did you know that engineered hardwood is less susceptible to expansion and contraction due to changes in temperature and humidity, making it less likely to warp or buckle over time? Because our home at the beach is so close to the water, the humidity was a huge factor.

So we made the decision to use the Element Flooring engineered hardwood to combat the elements!

To give you a sense of the impact of humidity at the beach, we had quite a few areas in the kitchen where we needed to patch the old hardwood flooring. When our contractor patched in some new hardwood in the kitchen, the boards expanded and contracted for weeks. It took almost a month for the new hardwood to acclimate and as a result, we couldn’t sand and finish the kitchen floors for a very long time.

There were three new areas in the beach house where we needed to add new flooring: the expanded primary bedroom, the new first-floor bedroom, and the third-floor staircase.

Benefits of Element Hardwood Flooring

Durability and Affordability

Element Hardwood is an engineered hardwood flooring that is made with a high-quality plywood core and a top layer of real hardwood. The result is a flooring product that combines the best of both worlds – the durability and affordability of engineered hardwood with the timeless beauty of traditional hardwood flooring.

Thickness and Ability to Sand Engineered Hardwood

One of the biggest benefits of Element is its thickness. Unlike many other types of engineered hardwood flooring, Element features a thicker wear layer, which means that it can be sanded and refinished multiple times over its lifetime. This means that you can enjoy the beauty of your Element Flooring for years to come without worrying about it wearing out or going out of style.

Color Selection

Another benefit of Element hardwood flooring is its color selection. Element offers so many incredible colors to choose from, beiges, browns, grays, light browns, dark browns, and whites. There are literally so many colors available, you are ensured of finding the perfect shade to complement your home’s décor.

Element sent me samples of the different colors and I laid them on our existing dark floors of the beach house. As you can see, I wanted much lighter new flooring.

Element also uses a color-matching process from Bona, a world leader in hardwood floor care and maintenance. This means that your Element flooring will match seamlessly with any existing hardwood floors in your home.

I chose the Napa Valley Collection, and the color is sunbleached. We then matched the stain for the existing hardwood that was already in the house to our new Element flooring.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a very important consideration for us when choosing a flooring product. Element hardwood flooring is made with sustainable materials and is CARB Phase 2 compliant, meaning that it meets strict emissions standards for indoor air quality.

Additionally, they are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which ensures that the wood used in the manufacturing process comes from responsibly managed forests.

A Seamless Approach to Adding New Flooring to the Beach House

Here is a comparison of the old hardwood flooring and the new engineered hardwood.

The top of the staircase (at the bottom of the photo) is the old flooring. The stairs and the bedroom floor are engineered hardwood.

Wow is all I can say. You cannot tell the difference!

Combining the existing hardwood flooring with the new Element engineered hardwood flooring was the absolute best decision!

Stay tuned for future blog posts about selecting, installing, and cleaning the Element White Oak Flooring in the beach house.

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