Anyone who's ever gut renovated a place knows the dilemma we've been in – there are TOO many choices. You need to pick an anchor piece first, kinda like the corners and edges of a puzzle, and then everything falls into place. Given that fact that we are going to replace all the horrible tile and ugly carpet in the whole guest house with wood flooring we decided that this new floor would be our anchor piece and then everything would fall into place. This is easier said than done as we've spent months researching and looking at flooring, going back and forth on the options and just driving ourselves crazy in general – what can I say, it's a short trip.
Floors are tricky beasts, it's not as simple and getting the first color that strikes your fancy and nailing it down – it's also not about buying the cheapest thing which we learned at the last house. Well, we learned a lot of things; mostly don't let a self-centered and incompetent contractor do your work for you! But our red cherry floor in Brooklyn was a huge mess. Funnily enough everyone who set foot in the house said they adored it but they just didn't know enough to see the buckling or feel the springiness. Most of this was the install for sure but materials play a huge role as well. That's why this time around no made in China, no brand name crap for us, we're going with a reputable company and paying a bit more to have a floor that lasts and looks good for decades. Installing it ourselves is also in the cards but armed with some knee pads and time we don't think this will be too hard at all!
First off with flooring you need to consider the subfloor which in the guest house is a concrete slab. As it's all on the ground floor moisture is an issue so we need to go with an engineered floor. We have the option to either float or glue down the floor but floating is easier by far and best for this climate and moisture level. Then we can either use a click and lock floor or glue the joints together. We tried for click and lock but the materials felt cheap and the options weren't great so we expanded our options to gluing joints and found a whole world of possibilities.
After researching brands we pretty much settled on either Armstrong or Bruce (which is really the same company) although we were open to other companies as long as they were not made in China and came in around the $5 per square foot mark.
The color of the wood we wanted in either the Hickory or Walnut family (although not Walnut wood, just color – we wanted as hard of a wood as possible and Walnut is not very hard) The challenge color wise was to find something that matched with our décor theme (which is sort of a mocha/cappuccino theme with blue accents – inspired by this bedspread) which looks much better in real life than it does in this stock photo:

At the same time the new floor needs to match our new front door which has a real cherry/mahogany tone to it:

Not as easy as it sounds but after countless Saturdays at flooring stores we found the winner – Armstrong Rustic Accents Hand-scraped Medium Gloss Acacia engineered floor in Old World Finish – of course this picture does it no justice but here it is:

Here is a larger install picture but this is the natural finish which is much lighter than we will get:

I'm so excited for this floor – it's engineered but it looks rich and real with great color tones – unlike the picture above the darker shade is not so busy and the hand scraping isn't too over the top. It looks rustic but yet very modern and clean. It feels solid and warm and is not too glossy (unlike our last floor that our stupid contractor put a polyurethane layer on – shiny and horrible!) I love Acacia so I'm very happy we were able to find it from a good brand at an affordable price – installing it ourselves will also save tons of money. Rock!
As suspected, with our anchor piece selected, the rest of the choices quickly feel into place. We are going to do a dark shaker style kitchen cabinet in an espresso finish like this one from cabinets to go:

Or the similar looking Alder Shaker cabinets in Espresso finish from Bellmont – as this is just the guest house kitchen and the sizes are standard I'm leaning towards cheaper cabinets but we are pricing out both. We are hoping to do all glass front cabinets on top to make it less dark and closed in. And of course we will get some nicer handles. We already have a new stove (which is black) and will use the dishwasher from the main house (which is black) but we plan to buy a new fridge in black to match. Hoping this does look too dark but the light counter and backsplash plus the glass upper cabinets should make it okay.
In the vein of light countertops we narrowed our search to Quartz (like granite but no hassle!) so we found this great silestone color called Bamboo with just the right amount of speckle but not too busy

Tile wise we want to keep the backsplash pretty clean and minimal and create a mosaic pattern behind the stove that repeats in an accent around the backsplash. As we love tiny glass tile accenting subway tiles we decided on a marble subway tile in a colored called Cappuccino (how fitting!) with an glass mosaic accent called Espresso (even more fitting) that blends travertine, marble and glass. It's so hard to show the color and textures of these things but here's my attempt

You can sorta see it better on their linear mosaic

Here's my poor camera phone attempt to capture all the materials together – using the 3x6 tiles in the top right corner and the square mosaic in the top left, cabinet and counter top swatches there too on top of the floor.

Another shot of our materials together – I'm personally impressed with my restraint here as I usually veer towards dark colors but that is not so good for the guest house or for resale – this is nice, clean and muted but not boring at all – if I do say so myself!

Okay I realize not everyone loves home renovations and DIY quite as much as we do, but Eric and I are positively giddy about the potential for our new guest house kitchen. It will after all be our kitchen for a while during the main house reno. I can't wait to get started!