That will be beautiful. And you can find a nice soft rug in colors you love, to put at the foot of the stairs.
My riding teacher was telling me (apropos of one of my PTSD meltdowns-on-the-hoof) about a client of hers who has vertigo, and who rides horses. Sometimes she has to lie down in the middle of the round pen (swearing a blue streak), but she carries on. That made me think of you.
This is more-or-less why I ended up having wood installed in my living room. I went for carpet for warmth in the basement, though.
Lois Bujold is also very fond of beige for decorating purposes. Her living room is a medley of neutral colors, and it makes her very happy. (Oatmeal is a neutral color, so she's contributing to the oatmeal shortage, perhaps.)
Also, would you like the name of a really good floor installer guy?
Even I feel better about wood, and it's not my home. When you said "carpet", I was like, "Oh, well, carpet. Carpet is carpet. It will be fine. Can I help with the practical stuff? Not living in Minneapolis, no, I cannot. Okay, moving on." But now that you have said "wood".... I'm excited! I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys choose! Suddenly your flooring has become a neat adventure that I want to peek in on and get to check out too. :D
And you're even one of the half-dozen people who will ever be allowed down there!
I promise to make appropriate ooing and ahhing noises at the whole thing. I mean, you promised not to cover the whole place in gold leaf, so it should be pretty safe, right?
Oh, hell, I forgot that entirely.
Sigh. It was thoughtless and stupid of me, but I'm sure I'll manage to get it scraped off and repaint by the time you're here next.
So curtains over the gold leaf won't be enough for her allergies, then?
When you go to Australia, they sell sheep skins - these are made to be used as small rugs and are so fluffy they would be actually pleasurable to fall on, assuming one could be anchored firmly enough that it didn't *cause* you to fall. I bet they or something equivalently soft could be had in the US. And anyway, wood rally is softer than stone or tile floors (also less sturdy and prone to showing marks if you drag furniture around but I understand that they have wood that doesn't do that these days and also that some people are less prone to dragging furniture around than I am.
But I realize those things aren't the point anyway. I think you used the right criteria in making your decision, to the point that someday you may take a minor fall, think "that'll leave a bruise" and then the next thing you'll think is "this is worth it".
If they've got the natural suede on the other side, they're pretty naturally nonskid.
I can tell you from experience of being eight years old that you can skid on them on stone if you push off just right. But they don't want to do it, and they flat out won't do it on wood or lino.
Suddenly I am wondering if the American lack of the short term "lino" means that the Minneapolis suburb called Lino Lakes would amuse you.
It's not actually what it sounds like. It's just some lakes and there was a person called Lino who lived near them. They don't have to hire somebody to mop their lakes of lino.
Edited at 2010-02-07 12:19 pm (UTC)
You can get them in Wales too. I was in a shop in Dolgellau in the summer where they were having a sale on the gorgeous ones in natural colours, and it was only my complete lack of money that prevented me from buying lots of them.
What they are great for, what we used them for when I was a kid, is bedside rugs -- the thing your feet find when you step out of bed. Those particular ones, all our bedside rugs, then got to be bed padding for my grandmother when she came home to die, because when you are bedbound they are soft and textured and lovely.
Z was very good at stopping me buying one. "It's very expensive. And Rysmiel wouldn't like it. And you'd have to ship it home..." but all the time he was petting it.
They were seventy pounds for whole-sheep sized ones.
Excuse me, I'm going to lie on my sheepskin jacket for a moment.
Also I suspect Ista would think they were the very bestestest idea a monkey ever ever had. And I am not giving up on someday getting to Wales or Australia. So.
Nor should you give up on getting to Wales AND Australia. But sheepskins can (or at least used-to could) be gotten at IKEA, 'cause it's a Swedish thing too. (Somewhere there may still be baby pictures of me smiling cheerfully on a big fluffy sheepskin.)
Hmm. Well, they say it's a sheepskin. But if so, it must have been close-sheared fairly recently before slaughter. The ones I'm thinking of have a much, much deeper 'pile' -- the wool has more loft and is combed out straight. I don't know if it's a different handling thing, or if it's just a whole different breed of sheep, but the ones they used to carry were much more fluffy. Poot.
I think she should just wrap herself in the sheepskin and that would solve everything.
You're so sane. And I appreciate you.
Yay! Wood floors are awesome. I am so grateful that my house is entirely wood-floored except the bathroom and kitchen.
And ... yes ... "not that person you think of when you get a cold and the room spins a little."
I SO HEAR YOU ON THAT. Although I do like to be the go-to person when people have questions about whacked-out guts ... that's about the only thing I like about it.
Yah, that's just it: I do like being the go-to person for questions. It's just that that's not always what's going on with that.
Hurrah! I am glad you have decided on a thing you like. Wood floors are very nice.
Wood smells better than carpet too. Carpet glue always smells like office space, but the smell of woodwork has such personality, and it's unique to the wood you choose too. Veryveryvery fine house, indeed.
I love wood floors. We're looking at moving to a new place (still renting), and we're looking to move into the historic district just to get the wood.
There are some really lovely old homes that have been maintained and/or renovated beautifully. If you don't find what you're looking for in floorplan/etc., though, they're making more and more accessible wood floors that people can install themselves or have installed on preexisting surfaces these days. That won't give the rest of the house the features of a gorgeous old Arts and Crafts home (or Victorian or whatever style calls to you), but on the other hand I don't know how you feel about, say, number of electrical outlets or size/number of bathrooms or etc., or what's typical in your area in that regard. A good inspector will ask the right questions, though, when you do get ready to buy. Don't be afraid to back out of a sale if the inspector brings up issues you just don't want to deal with.
This sounds like an excellent plan.
We put foam interlock tiles under the big rug in our basement playroom/library, and they make a good walking surface for tired limbs as well as a good falling-down surface (for Charlie anyway)--cushier than standard non-skid liner. Lowe's has them in packs of 4 (16 sq feet) for $20, in case you're interested.
<3 wood.
Not that you need my approval or permission or anything. But still, given a choice--wood.
Also, when wet things end up on wood, you can wipe it up and it won't get weird and funky. It is so easy for carpet to get really nasty, and it less trouble to clean wood.
Also, carpeted stairs are quieter.
Well, I'm glad you are able to make a choice that makes you actively happy. Our house has oak floors in most of the main level, and I love them.
If you're still looking for recommendations now that you've decided to go ahead with wood... We had Dave's Floor Sanding refinish our floors a couple years ago, and we couldn't have been happier with the process and the results. Their bid was also the lowest and the shortest in terms of the number of nights we'd need to sleep in the basement. While ours was a straightforward refinishing job, I have no reason to believe that Dave's wouldn't do as well on an installation. http://www.davesfloorsanding.com/
I am by no means a flooring expert, but after taking a dance class a while back I got curious about sprung floors, and one of the things I stumbled across while googling around was this article on how to build subfloors to handle martial arts falls and throws. If there's some way to do something similar beneath a wood finished floor, that may be an option to help with falls while still giving you the floor finish you prefer.
We're being careful in our choice of underlayment, yep.
I consider beige a classic neutral, but I could easily imagine saying such things about a frizzy thick beige carpet in an otherwise white room. | 
