We Picked Our Floors — and They’ve Arrived!

One of the coolest days in any renovation is when finishes arrive—I live for delivery and box opening! And today was a day I’ve dreamed about for months: our CRAFT hardwood floors arrived.

Hardwood flooring is a feature so prominent in a design that it’s often one of the first things you source. In our case, I started looking for floors months ago, but it wasn’t until last week that I stumbled upon the perfect match and we pulled the trigger—sight unseen!

Going into sourcing hardwood for Piper’s Peak, we had something like vertical grain Douglas fir in mind, but the finishing work and soft wood quality made it an unfitting choice for us. But we liked the grain pattern and ability to stain it to complement the ceiling. We had worked so hard to maintain the cabin’s original pine features, so finding a wood that complemented it became the goal. We cast our net wide and brought home floor samples of all kinds—light, mid-tone, varied, uniform, hickory, maple, oak, you name it. After narrowing down our choices, we realized our favourites were all from CRAFT Floor—a Canadian company who sources sustainable Northern Spruce—so I immediately hopped online to see more of their selections, and that’s when I spotted the floor to end all floors! The debates and hums and haws were over: Hayloft was it.

Before finding Hayloft, we loved Kavala (a perfectly neutral blonde with sapwood streaks) and Brevik (a very pleasing mid-tone, uniform brown), but Hayloft is perfect for the home, for the area, for us rugged dogs! Boasting a mixture of flat and vertical grain, it’s constructed from reclaimed Heart Pine sourcing back to factories and warehouses well over 100 years old. With sapwood streaks and a reddish hue, we knew it would match the original pine wonderfully, so we pulled the trigger, sight unseen in person! It gave us the vertical grain we loved and a reddish blonde natural pine hue, plus a few cool antique imperfection that suit the cabin perfectly.

Not only is the floor gorgeous, but we love that CRAFT values the environment. Their spruce is sourced in Canada where it’s a valued renewable resource and harvested from responsibly managed Canadian forests. And CRAFT’s care doesn’t stop there: each plank of our flooring is hand-worked by artisans to enhance and preserve its inherent character: nail holes and checks are expertly filled, and bolt holes and larger defects are repaired with natural heart pine wood plugs and patches. Almost every board has just the right amount of imperfection, but its lighter tone and organic grain bring a certain modern brightness to the space. What’s more, the bevels of every board are chiseled by hand and the UV-coated finish resulting in a lustre that reflects the sunlight beautifully.

Renovating responsibly is important to us, and buying from Canadian companies is also a big value of mine, so I’m super grateful to have stumbled upon CRAFT, and that we got to work with them to bring the perfect floors into our home. I still can’t believe we ordered them without ever having seen them in person, but it’s sometimes those serendipitous finds after hours of sourcing that end up being just the right fit. And likely what you were after all along! When you know, you just know…

So when do we begin installing them? This week! Next time you hear about our floors, you’ll be seeing them installed on Instagram, so be sure to follow for daily stories with our progress, and check out CRAFT’s Instagram, too, and show them some love for being awesome!