Scratches, scuffs, and dents are inevitable on hardwood floors. Don't worry! We've found 15 wood floor hacks to help you keep your floors looking like new.

This material is designed to help ESL/EFL students to learn basic vocabulary related to parts of the house in English. The material is ideal for kids between 4 to 7 years old. With this material, students will be able to develop writing, reading, listening and speaking skills related to basic vocabulary about the parts of the house. It includes: Poster with vocabulary of the unit. The following written activities to learn vocabulary: Trace the words for each picture. Fill in the missing vowel. Look at the picture , and write the correct word in the empty space. Look at the picture, and organize the letters in the empty space to form the correct word. Select the letters that are needed to complete the word, then write the word in the empty space. Cut and paste in the empty spaces the picture and the right word. Cut and paste in the empty spaces the right picture. Match the part of the house to the correct word. Look at the picture, and then circle the correct word. Circle the correct picture for each word. Word search puzzle. Two "I have, who has?" games (one with pictures and words and the other one just with pictures) One memory game. Flashcards. 3 Dominoes (one with pictures, the second one with images and the third one with words and images). Exercises to talk about the parts of the house: Task cards and question cards. Two interactive exercises in PowerPoint (.pptx) Presentation Look at the picture, and then select the correct word. Select the correct picture for each word. Vocabulary from this unit: house kitchen living room dining room bedroom bathroom garden window door wall ceiling floor Level: A1 - Beginner

Aaaaaand we're back. So, if you've been paying attention, you may have realized that I just fell off the face of the Earth mid-renovation. Obviously, something went awry. Let's not beat around the bush. I temporarily messed up my floors. And, rather than divulge my mishaps as they were happening (Get. Real.) I instead spent a few weeks crying into Cheese's fur, planning my escape to Paraguay, and wiping pizza grease on my sweatpants uniform. Okay, I'm being dramatic. Kinda. There are far worse things in the world than messing up your floors. I've lived through a few of them. However, I'm still a human, I occasionally lose perspective, and I definitely spent a few days drenching poor little Cheese's fur with my tears. Here's what happened. I was determined to have dark floors in our house. I wanted them so bad. I looked at picture after picture of houses with dark floors, and I just knew that our house was meant to have dark floors. I imagined something like this: via Style Me Pretty Or this. via Houzz And then our flooring was installed. And since we used solid hardwood vs engineered hardwood, it was fully installed as unfinished wood (without the stain applied yet), and I had a chance to see what our house would look like with natural floors. And I loved it. It really made our 1970's house look light and bright and beautiful. But, then self-doubt and insecurity raced in and ate me alive. I felt like I should do what everyone else does, rather than do what works best for me, and it felt scary to go against the norm. Plus, my original vision was dark floors, and it was so hard to change course mid-race. In short, I could see with my own eyes that the light flooring looked really great in our house, and yet I ignored myself. I am woman. Hear me roar. So, anyways, I pushed forward with my irrationally dark flooring plan. I eventually settled on a dark brown stain called 'Kona'. In hindsight, I can totally see the doom that was headed my way. But, at the time, I was totally lost in the moment, dirty dancing on Kona's leg. It looked so great when we tested the stain on a small piece of our flooring. I moved it around into each of the rooms and stared at it for several days while the flooring was finished being installed. Again, in hindsight, this was a terrible way to make a decision. A tiny poptart of dark wood does not give you an accurate indication of what your ENTIRE house will look like with wall to wall dark floors. But, ultimately, I gave the go ahead for the stain, and when I came home that day, here's what our floors looked like. It wasn't the worst thing ever. But it definitely wasn't good. And it was just so gloomy. I knew I had made a mistake. I had inadvertently created a 1970's dungeon. The stain turned out kinda orange (which still baffles me), and it didn't take well to the solid hardwood at all. It ended up being blotchy and uneven, and basically, I hated it. When this all started, I had no idea about the differences between solid and engineered flooring, but I definitely do now. In a nutshell, solid hardwood flooring is higher quality, but it's really difficult to get that uniform color that you would get with really dark engineered flooring, because you have to stain most solid hardwood flooring on site. You can buy already stained solid hardwood floors, but that was not in my little budget. There's about a million more things you should know about solid vs. engineering hardwoods (and about a million more options) but my plan is to share that info in another post. Otherwise this post will take you 42 years to read. So, even though the stain looked terrible, there was a bit of a silver lining in the stain debacle...I was able to see once and for all that our house looked bad with dark floors. Because even if they had been a lighter brown, or even just a uniform color, it wouldn't have mattered. I love dark hardwood floors, but not in our house. So don't get mad at me if you have dark floors. Clearly, I wanted a set of my own. It just wasn't meant to be. It was around this time that Cheese's fur got soaked with eyeball secretions. Could I have phrased that any worse? I had no idea what on earth I was going to do. Do I apply for Paraguayan citizenship? Do I buy 800 rugs, admit defeat, and just pretend like none of this ever happened? None of those options seemed viable, so instead I just moped around for a few days and eventually mustered the courage to tell our contractor that we weren't happy. Okay, fine, Jesse did it. But, anyways, our contractor was wonderful about the entire thing, and he agreed to sand the floors back down to the natural wood. He didn't know I have a blog (not that that necessarily would've mattered...I'm not Beyonce). He's just a nice guy who wants to make sure his customers are happy. Of course, we were already at week 5 in the renovation, and this new phase of sanding/sealing tacked on 2 more weeks. Oh, joyous day. So, the sanding began. Again. I was feeling pretty panicked at this point, and searching for yacht-sized rugs online, but I did my best to remain patient and hope for the best. After about a week, most of the stain was sanded off, I began to see the natural wood again, and I remembered how to breathe. There was still stain all over the walls (which will all be repainted and covered down at the bottom with trim anyways), and just a tiny little bit still in the wood grain, but I could definitely see a light at the end of the tunnel. Still though, we were going into week 7, and I began to feel a little meltdown-ey. My fridge and oven were outside on the front deck with a tarp over them. The washer and dryer were next to my bed. And I was still basically living at this place. At one point, I replaced my floor vents and just left the old disgusting ones on my kitchen counters for a week. Full of bugs and dust circa 1975. It is what it is. Luckily, right around the same time as my meltdown, we had plans to get out of town for a week. We drove to Charleston to watch my little brother, Mathias, graduate from the Navy Nuclear Power School, where he's studying to become a Nuclear Engineer. I'm so proud of him, he's my favorite creature on the earth, 10 years younger than me, and it basically healed my soul to spend a little time with him. I know he's just some random dude in a dapper sailor suit to you, but trust me, to know Mathias is to love Mathias. I have yet to find the exception. Jesse almost loves him even more than me, which is demonstrated by the above picture. They intentionally posed that way, and even barked at me to get out of the picture so that they could capture this celebratory day with a prom photo. This is my life. When that was over, Jesse and I headed to Myrtle Beach so that he could attend a work convention. He worked, I slothed on the beach. Then on the last day, Mathias and Meredith (his girlfriend that I also love) drove down from Charleston and Myrtled it up with us for the evening. They all ate oysters. I did not. It was glorious. Just so you know, I will eat anything. Unless it resembles a loogie. I just got really sidetracked on a brother/beach tangent. So sorry. Anyways, I came back with a new zest for life, which is good, because I was really fading fast. By the time we came home, our floors had been sealed with several layers of satin topcoat, and were finally finished (at least on the main level). I jumped up and down for a full 42 minutes. Just to really hammer home what an improvement this really is, here's our house when we first moved in: And here we are today. It's a floor mini-miracle. And, luckily I captured the miracle when we first got home. Because the very next day, it was filled back up with stuff for the entryway. And it kinda still looks like this. But the good news is that I finally have floors that I love, and we finally have lift off in the entryway pit. It only took 8 little weeks to get to this point. We're going to laugh about that one day. I laughed a little bit while writing that sentence. Too soon. I have a lot more to share about the entryway, and the stair rail is being built today, but we'll talk about all of that soon. Today, we have floors. FLOORS, ya'll. And I might actually have my house back this weekend. Can I hug you? Before we go, I don't have any slightly nauseating life lessons to share with you. But, I will throw in a picture of Cheese, who refuses to look me in the eyes lately. Who can blame her. Just a few more days, girl. And then you can Risky Business yourself all over the house. I'll even get you 4 little white socks. That's all, ya'll. 'Til we meet again. P.S. The other posts in the House Makeover series can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 UPDATE: This story was FAR from over. We ended up having to redo these floors entirely. Only a year later. You can read why here. Follow my blog with Follow my blog on or or Subscribe to LiveLoveDIY with email! Enter your email address: -->

Here we go... Part one of our floor finishing series. Buckle up! It's going to be a messy ride. Ok, so I thought about doing everything in one big post, but I think breaking it down will be a little better. As many of you know we put 8 inch pine plank boards throughout a majority of the lower level of our farmhouse that I blogged about . Now is the hard part... we need to decide how we are going to finish them. Paint, wax, stain, a mixture of both, oil, and the list goes on. You guys it's

We’ve uhmmed and ahhed about what to do with the loft bedroom flooring for ages now. As i’m going all out Scandinavian for the bedroom design, a blonde wood floor seemed the obvious choice. But then, to save some money and get this room finished in time for Christmas, we played around with the idea of simply painting the chipboard subfloor black (to which the builder just sighed and shook his head). After going around in circles for several weeks, mentally noting the pros and cons of both options, we finally decided on floor boards. Done. Having an actual floor laid meant I finally got to work with my fave joiners again, Bare Joinery. Which is always a pleasure, as they’re always up for a challenge and happy(ish) to experiment with materials, the design, the process, and most importantly, they don’t sigh and shake their heads at my less than conventional ideas. Not within view anyway. Our plan to lay floorboards sounds pretty standard, apart from the fact I didn’t want them to be actual floorboards, as …

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

How to DIY finish wide plank pine floors using water based Bona system, Bona Amberseal, Bona Mega. Why we chose waterbased floor finish.

I think the MOST frequently asked question I get since laying our pine floors has been... WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO YOUR FLOORS? You can see the flooring we put in Guys it keeps me up at night. Do we paint? Do we stain? Do we do a combo of both? What color paint? What color stain? Gahhh. I blogged here some paint color options . & today I wanted to quick pop in with the only stain color that I have liked since starting the stain sampling process... Ok, don't mind my lack of pedicure, but here is

From geometric tiling patterns to inlaid brass and metal strips, discover the top 70 best tile to wood floor transition ideas. Explore flooring designs.

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

Step-by-step instructions on how to easily refinish hardwood floors yourself.

An Engineered Hardwood Floor is a beautiful and versatile alternative to Hardwood Flooring. Here are a few tips to make your next purchase a success.

Hello everyone! Sorry for the later post this week, I’ve been busy pulling together some visuals for the blog in the hope of being a bit ahead (or hopefully maybe just ‘on’) schedule. Unlike the rest of the house, where I’ve had a chance to draw stuff up, then get started on the work ahead of […]

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

Here’s what designers say about choosing a kitchen floor that’s not the same as the rest of your home’s flooring

The client chose our Custom Made Rhombille design to be finished in the Istoria Bespoke Hibiscus, with a 125mm wide border going around.

I still can’t believe I was able to makeover my hard wood floors all on my own! It’s been a lot of work and a lot of trial and error,…

DIYNetwork.com explains how floors are built and what materials are commonly used in their construction.

Flooring Options for Your Home

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

Whether you are building a new house or remodeling an older home, you'll need plans to guide you through the project. Here are some tips to help you

This is the journey of how we installed wood look tile throughout our 2600 sf home with professional looking results.

At Braeside, we control the entire process which means, no surprises! FOR PERSONALISED SERVICE PLEASE CONTACT US TODAY Welcome to Braeside Building. Sydney's Northern Beaches building experts. Specialising in custom joinery and building projects, we pride ourselves on being able to offer a ...

Puzzle flooring is usually not a design focus when it comes to home and interior design. It may even be just an afterthought in most cases, but the designers of these puzzle floor coverings obviously think otherwise!

FacebookTweetPin81 Hello! I’m thrilled with the response that I got on part one of this gorgeous home tour, and I’m certain that part two won’t disappoint. I love how this addition has brought modern functionality without losing its charm and character. Let me refresh your memory by taking another look at the exterior of the home, post-remodel: And again, here is the before: So, let’s take a peek upstairs, shall we? Let’s start with one of their daughter’s rooms, which used to be their master bedroom. Adorable, yes? Their other girl’s room is equally charming, and the soft lavender color on the wall is perfect. How cute is that quilt? There is a Jack and Jill bath that connects the two rooms that is also slated for a remodel at some point in the future: I didn’t get a photo of her son’s room (my bad), but I did get a shot of this awesome hang out space that is connected to his room. I don’t think my kids would ever leave if they had this area connected to their rooms. One of their upstairs bathrooms in all of its vintage loveliness… I know you’re itching to see the addition, so […]

Hi there! I’m back today with another floor plan for you to look over. I like this one! It’s a nice basic family home with all of the features I love. The layout of the garage/storage/laundry/scullery is my favourite part of the home. Actually, the whole layout is pretty good.…

Here is a great floor plan that will suit most residential blocks. This home has a 15.8m frontage, and inside is jam packed with everything you need. I have to say, my favourite part is the master suite. Located at the rear of the home, it has a luxurious ensuite, a…

When you spend decades designing wood floors, you hear a lot of questions from your team and clients along the way. For this winning entry, the “answer” was in the floor. Mark Scheller, president of Scheller Hardwood Floors, Inc. in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Crispin, founder of Legendary Hardwood Floors, LLC in Chicago, Illinois, have

Last weekend, my husband and my father in law began working on our herringbone kitchen floors. They are far from done, but since the process...