A white wash

With the completion date nearing I'm allowing myself to get excited and start planning the interior design of this grand old vicarage. A big disappointment to me were the floors. I just love old natural timber floors. The vicarage however has the beautiful floors, but, as the picture above shows, at some stage these beautiful slats of wood were painted black. Black can look amazing. I do love the look of black floors, white walls and vibrant splashes of colour. But that's not the look I'm going for.

We considered a number of options. Replacing them completely with reclaimed floorboards, stripping them, or using new machined timber floors. Something we didn't consider initially was to white wash them. That was until we went to a furniture shop on Upper Street, Islington (sadly can't remember the name but must visit again).

Their floors are in the same condition as ours and had even been painted black. The owners white washed them a couple of years ago and the result is incredible. Of course they get a lot more foot traffic then we're likely to but the paint had worn away on the heavily used areas so you could see the black and sometimes the raw timber underneath.

What really sold the white wash idea to me was these images posted by blogger Nancy Flowers. While the full white thing just isn't me, how beautiful are the floors? So that's it. White floors it is. We just need a huge house warming party to wear them down quickly to the worn through look I'm after.

Images from NancyFlowers