I’m a huge fan of hardwood floors for both their beauty and their durability, but I’ll admit that they can be pretty boring. Paint can do a lot to fix up a dull floor, but painted wood floors can be a little overwhelming if you’re not showcasing them as the focal point of the room.

Painted checkerboard floors that feature wood floors are a good compromise, as they’re not so in-your-face as, say, a bright blue floor or as blah as a plain white floor, but at the same time they appeal to the eye. Here are six examples:

A soft, low-contrast checkerboard floor doesn’t steal a room’s thunder.

This patterned floor adds a lot of oomph to what might otherwise be a fairly drab kitchen. (via)

This red and white checkerboard floor is playful and fun. (via)

The border on this painted checkerboard floor gives the floor the finished look usually provided by a fine rug. (via)

In a room with built-ins like cabinets, your checkerboard floor colors can match or not, depending on the sort of look and feel you want to achieve. (via)

And when I say you I mean *you* — as DIY projects for the home go, painting a floor is one of the easier ones. The Wood Floor Guide has a how-to that takes you through the floor painting process step-by-step, though I much prefer the how-to on the This Old House web site because it includes not only steps, but also a video.

When you’ve just bought a house, especially if it’s your first and the house itself could use a little fixing up, it’s hard not to want to start knocking down walls and building additions. Yet as strong as the urge to remodel right away can be, I’d council you to wait. At least a year. Maybe two if you’re planning on doing anything drastic like starting your own business, becoming a telecommuter, or having a baby.

“What?” you say, both incredulous and impatient to get those renovations underway.

But hear me out. Unless you have solid, unchangeable life plan that will guide your every action for the next decade or you have enough spare cash to re-remodel whenever you like, you may find that one or two years from now what you need from your home is quite different than what you needed from it when you closed. It’d be shame to build a dormer and turn two bedrooms into a single master bedroom just to discover that the bedroom you sacrificed would have made the perfect home office or crafting room or nursery. It’d be even worse to renovate without thinking very carefully and end up with a mishmash like this:

So consider letting a year (or more) go by before you nail down your remodeling plans. I guarantee you that in a year or two, your house will tell *you* whether you need to expand your kitchen or build a front porch or install a bay window. The Beard and I have been in our little house just over two years, and only now have we come to realize what we need to do with the upstairs, which is add a landing with a banister and divide one of the two bedrooms into a home office for each of us. I’m glad we waited until the house told us what we should do because if we hadn’t, we would have ended up with two bedrooms upstairs. It would have been nice, but not what we needed.

As you may have seen yesterday on Manolo for the Brides, I had Pergo installed in my kitchen yesterday. I have to say I am very pleased with the results, though it rather saddens me that it looks *better* than the hardwood floors I have everywhere else, and those were refinished fairly recently. Now that the very, very ugly blue and white vinyl flooring is gone, I can finally divorce myself from the impulse to use so much blue in the kitchen. It was a little monotonous, actually, for my living room is done in two shades of blue. When we moved in, all the doorways in the kitchen and hallway were edged in dark blue to match the color of the vinyl and we didn’t bother changing it since we had planned to redo the floors before anything else in the house.

Now we are faced with a conundrum. We’re more or less committed to the idea of keeping the walls white because I like a lot of color in the kitchen, but I like it on the counters and such. We all know I love purple, so I’m leaning toward that, but The Beard is unconvinced. I was thinking that painted kitchen cabinets would provide just enough color to make things interesting. The question now is which purple? Here are some I like, as found on My Perfect Color:

Glidden Black Tulip

Color Your World Purple Prince

Sherwin Williams Izmir Purple

Dutch Boy Purple Velvet

Ralph Lauren Athletic Purple

Ralph Lauren Studio Purple

Vote in the poll to tell me (and by extension The Beard) which purple you prefer!

Today’s post is a shorty because my grandparents just rolled into town. Just about the only house and home topic on my mind today is how when I glanced at the cover of my latest This Old House magazine, I thought I was looking at House Beautiful.

Did I miss an editorial change? I’m used to seeing hardcore manly power tool reviews and full on tutorials teaching things like how to install a deck or water heater. This past issue, however, was full of cozy storage solutions and cutesy upgrades that involved decorating rather than building (or, my favorite, demolition). Not that I’m complaining, mind. It was just… weird.

I feel like I’m allowed to call people nerds because I myself am a first rate nerd. I love Doctor Who (old and new) and Battlestar Galactica and, yes, Star Treks of all flavors. I will say, however, that I think I would stop far short of asking Tony Alleyne of 24th Century Interior Design to redo my house in sci-fi style. If a friend transformed their house into a tribute to Star Trek, I would certainly admire their dedication, but all-in-all, it’s just not for me. Perhaps it is for you?

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I very much hope that the lovely Amy of The Adventures and Mishaps of Mrs. Amy B.! does not mind my highlighting her wonderful home decor transformation here at Manolo for the Home. She and her husband are apparently truly talented DIYers. What evidence can I offer? Just look at their fireplace before:

Pretty blah, right? Now admire their beautiful fireplace after some hard work:

Do note that they don’t actually use their fireplace, nor do they have any plans to ever begin using it, so hanging what looks like a rather fine flat screen television over it will not be a problem. I would not recommend this particular set-up to anyone who enjoys sitting in front of a crackling fire in the wintertime. If, on the other hand, you could give a fig about fire, do feel free to think up your own variation on Amy’s chic fireplace!

After yesterday’s post on open kitchen shelving, I thought I’d post a photo of another take on kitchen cabinets without doors. All right, so these aren’t actually kitchen cabinets, but they take the place of cabinets quite nicely and I adore the look.

Let me and The Beard know whether we should take the plunge and start DIY renovations by voting in yesterday’s informal poll!

The Beard and I have thrown around the idea of taking off some of our kitchen cabinets to make that particular space a little more airy and cute. We’re lucky in that we have dishware that’s ready to display… and enough kitchen cabinetry to hide all the things we’d rather not have to look at day in and day out. On the other hand, we have five cats and a baby on the way. While it will be some time before the baby has any hope of getting onto kitchen counters, the cats are only one jump away from a romp through the plates and glasses. Obviously, we’re somewhat torn on whether or not to go ahead with this plan.

What better way to decide what to do with my home than a poll? Help me and The Beard decide what to do by casting your vote or commenting with your alternate ideas.

This living room below is in a loft in a converted 19th-century chocolate factory in Moscow. How cool is that furniture set-up?

Now, industrial lofts are trendy, lofts are fun, but lofts are not for everyone. Specifically, they are not for those of us who haven’t cashed in on a local oil boom, made a ton of money in the stock market, or been blessed with rich, elderly relatives. A sunken sofa, however, could be doable, if The Beard agreed to let me burrow into the cozy finished basement that also serves as his office and studio.

If you’re in the market for some place to put down roots and you have a little scratch to toss around, you have a couple of choices. For example, you can buy an existing house or buy a plot of land and have someone build a fresh house to your specs. When you want to make sure you’re as abso-posi-lutely eco-friendly as possible, it’s time to take a pause. After all, it’s not about living in a geodesic dome or digging out an earth house anymore! Today’s “green” homes — the ones that use less energy, are built using fewer resources, and contain a lower volume of nasty chemicals — look just like their neighbors.

Well, most of the time. This eco-house in the Cambridgeshire countryside is pretty unique, inside and out.

But back to the topic at hand! I know I’ve heard a lot of people say that it’s better for the environment to drive a well-maintained used car than to buy a new hybrid, though I don’t know how valid that is. I’ve been trying to figure out whether that same maxim applies to houses as well. Is it better for the environment to buy an older house that’s already been built and then do what you can to retrofit it for eco-friendliness, or is it better to start from zero (either knocking down an extant house or buying a piece of land) with a new house that meets every criteria for greenitude right from the start?

On one hand, there are plenty of things you can do to greenify your home without having to build a new one. On the other hand, there are plenty of sustainable building materials you might use to create a home that is unobtrusive within its environment. The overall expense aside, how does using a previously untouched piece of land fit into the equation?

I’d love to hear your take on this because I haven’t come to any real conclusion yet and my (admittedly spotty) research hasn’t gotten me very far!