Our Basement Reveal w/ Shaw Floors

DISCLAIMER: This post is sponsored by Shaw Floors. All opinions are my own.
Thank you to Shaw Floors for sponsoring this post! Post contains affiliate links.

Happy Monday! Today I am sharing a BRAND NEW “Our Historic Wonderland” room reveal! Well, not so much a room reveal, but almost an entire floor! Our basement… From the very first time we saw OHW at 9pm on a pitch black Friday evening in November 2015, I was in LOVE with the basement. I think one thing I love most is that it’s not really even a true basement. Although it is only a portion of the home’s footprint, it is all full daylight. Which I LOVE. PLUS, it has original 1905 brick walls throughout and high ceilings like the rest of our home. A recipe for gorgeousness all around.

As I have mentioned time and time again, I am OBSESSED with whitewashed hardwood flooring. OBSESSED. After years and years of darker hardwoods in our last home and even our home before that, I have sworn away anything darker than a Cheerio FOREVERRRRRR. I drove myself seriously nutso trying to maintain “clean-ish” floors. Bye bye crazy woman and HELLLOOOOO low maintenance.

After a seemingly endless search for REAL whitewashed hardwood flooring, I finally discovered not one, not two but THREE (or more) that I loved for OHW. Here’s the one I chose for the basement…

Empire Oak Astor

So let’s chat BASEMENT + HARDWOOD FLOORING… Not the best combination. So we thought. I was sooooo adamant about wanting real hardwood flooring in our basement. I had a vision in mind for the space and it just “needed” that wood tone look to contrast against the brick. Mark was not convinced. Whatsoever. He begged me to choose tile but I insisted it would look best. And Shaw Floors insisted that they could make it work. And here’s how…

Before installing hardwood in the basement, Shaw Floors conducted a standardized test to measure the concrete and presence of moisture in the slab. This is known as an In-Situ Relative Humidity test. Typically, the relative humidity limit for wood is 75%.

Since I have what’s considered to be a daylight basement (walk out) the slab is technically below grade resulting in the potential for water vapor to come up through the concrete.

Therefore, Shaw Floors recommended using Versashield MBX, an underlayment that prevents the flow of moisture through the concrete and protects the hardwood floor. In addition, Shaw Floors used 35Mc, a moisture cured urethane adhesive that works with the Versashield to adhere the wood for added protection.

As you can see, proper installation was critical to ensuring top performance of the hardwood floors in the basement. Make sure to work with your installation professional when selecting and installing hardwood for basement areas.

Quick story before I share the reveal… Do y’all happen to remember when I shared our move-in day catastrophes??? And how our master toilet FLOODED our basement the DAY WE MOVED IN?!? Yes, it happened and there was literally several inches of water on our brand new hardwoods by the time we finally heard the water rushing through the ceiling. I SO wish I had gotten a picture but needless to say it was craziness and we tried to get it all cleaned up as quickly as possible. While we were cleaning up buckets of water, I was in TEARS at the possibility we had already destroyed our brand new hardwood flooring. Devastated. Yet somehow… some crazy way… they were not affected AT ALL. There was ZERO rippling and absolutely ZERO evidence the flood ever happened. I think Mark is still in shock. And will never use anything but Shaw hardwood ever again.

First, let’s take a peek at the basement BEFORE (Post-Framing)…