Before & After: Stonewall, LA Gets...

The Situation

A homeowner in Stonewall reached out about a home they'd been in for about eight years. The house — a wood-frame construction with a crawl space — had wall-to-wall carpet throughout the main living areas that had come with the house. It was original and it showed. They'd replaced it once with a lower-cost carpet option and were done with carpet altogether.

The crawl space construction was actually an asset here. Wood-frame homes with crawl spaces in Louisiana tend to handle solid hardwood better than slab-on-grade homes, because the underfloor environment is more controllable and the wood subfloor gives solid hardwood a better mechanical attachment option.

They wanted solid hardwood in the living room, dining room, and two bedrooms — approximately 900 square feet — in a species and color that would work with the home's existing trim and doors, which were a medium walnut stain.

The Recommendation

We recommended solid red oak in a medium-warm stain — a custom blend of two standard stain colors applied in sequence to get a tone that coordinated with the existing walnut millwork without trying to match it exactly. Red oak was the right call here for a few reasons:

Solid red oak is appropriate for a crawl space construction where the subfloor is plywood and mechanical fastening is the preferred installation method.
Red oak's grain accepts stain blending well, giving us more flexibility to hit a specific tone than white oak or maple would.
The stain blend let us reference the walnut trim without competing with it — the floors read as warm and complementary, not as a mismatch.

Moisture testing of the wood subfloor came back well within range. The crawl space was enclosed and had adequate vapor barrier coverage, which is the condition that makes solid hardwood viable in Louisiana.

The Install Reality

Pulling up the carpet and tack strips went smoothly. The wood subfloor underneath was in solid shape except for one area near a hallway bathroom where there had been a plumbing leak at some point — the previous homeowner had apparently addressed the leak itself but the subfloor in that area had absorbed enough moisture to cause some deformation. We replaced three sheets of subfloor plywood in that area before any hardwood went down.

That subfloor repair added half a day to the project. Finding it was better than installing over it.

The hardwood was installed with a pneumatic nailer — the traditional method for solid hardwood over a wood subfloor. Total install time was two and a half days. Stain and finish coat added another two days, with the finish requiring a 24-hour cure before light foot traffic and 72 hours before furniture moved back in.

The Result

The home went from dated carpet to solid red oak that coordinates beautifully with the existing trim. The custom stain blend reads warm and intentional. Several rooms in this house get good natural light, and hardwood in natural light does something no other product replicates.

The homeowner mentioned the floors completely changed how they felt about the house — which is almost always the case with hardwood. It's a material that has that effect.

If you're in Stonewall, Mansfield, or anywhere in DeSoto Parish looking for hardwood flooring, call Kevin at (318) 250-4948. We serve the full Shreveport metro and surrounding markets.