Now that my home renovation is pretty much finished, I'm taking stock of how it has all come together. It's been a massive project, taking an 1840s home that was last refurbished in 1972, and ripping walls apart to feed in a new wiring system, adding in new heating, a new kitchen, new bathrooms, the lot. All in all, the budget was just shy of $200,000 – an eyewatering expense that still makes me wince when I think of it.
And the biggest single chunk of that budget was on the chevron wood floors, each tile individually hand-laid in both our dining room and living room. Factoring in materials, labor, underlay, joists and upkeep, together they ended up costing nearly $10,000. Now don't get me wrong, I love how they turned out.
But $10,000 on , when I still can't afford to have a proper dining table to actually eat off? What was I thinking?! An early piece of advice I'd been given by an interiors editor I admired was to spend as much as you possibly can on the floors. The theory being that you'll almost certainly only do them once, and never replace them yourself. Whereas you might even update a in a decade or two's time, you're unlikely to ever touch the floor again.
So even if you have to sit on cardboard boxes while you save for proper chairs, she said, spend the budget on the floors and you'll never regret it. Which is how I justified the chevron wood floors I've always dreamed of. As a , it evokes grand old ballrooms, and 1930s palazzo-style ranches in the Hollywood hills .