The rest of the house has stained oak floors (with the exception of the bathrooms and laundry room), so Justin and I wanted stained oak floors in these two rooms. There is a flooring store very near our house called Floor & Decor. They sell really inexpensive floor coverings that are very good quality. We visited F&D several times before purchasing the wood.
I should mention that Justin and I can be very frugal. Justin will search and search for the best deal before making most any purchase. He calculated several different types of oak flooring before we decided to purchase cabin grade oak. Cabin grade oak is what you might expect to find in a "rustic" wood cabin. This wood grade has knot holes, some very pronounced grain patterns, and worm holes, all of which some people find appealing. We weren't really interested in these features because we wanted the floor to match the existing, so we purchased it knowing that we would have to go through the wood and decide which pieces to keep and which to trash (we're not going to actually throw the unused pieces in the trash...we just haven't decided what to do with it, yet...maybe sell it on craigslist). Due to this, we had to purchase extra wood, but the price allowed us to do this.
After we hired a floor installer and he began working, we discovered that we were going to be short on wood. Justin and I discussed it and decided to use the cabin grade stuff in the sunroom and buy first quality for the master bedroom. Justin and I spent most of last weekend going through boards and hauling the bad stuff to a pile outside. After we went through the boards, we arranged them on the floor to see if we would have enough. We did not have enough "good" boards, so we had to go through the "bad" boards again and give some of them more consideration. We eventually gathered enough boards to finish the sunroom. Justin got up early one weekday and drove to a flooring store and purchased wood for the master bedroom. Floor & Decor ran out of the cabin grade stuff and didn't have anything that would work for us.
We're very excited about this part of the house being finished because we're very eager to get to use these two rooms (which are fairly large) as living spaces. We found a stain that is a match to the existing floors, so when these rooms are stained, we're hoping they look like the rest of the house. I'll post more pictures soon.
These are pictures of the unfinished wood in the sunroom. The installer will sand, stain, and seal this next week.
