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To add to this: Mrs. FiveHour is a woman of taste. She will happily spend quite a bit of time/money on getting the thing she wants. She would divorce me if I suggested tearing out our home's pink bathroom.
Ten years ago, that wasn't the case. They used to absolutely look dated trash, now they're retro cool.
By contrast, gray was in fashion, and still is, but my dad is redoing the floor at the family beach house. And it's not my place, so I'm not going to be too picky, but the one rule I had was Absolutely No on gray vinyl plank. Because it's everywhere, and right now we all say it's neutral and timeless, but in another five to ten years, we'll see a house with gray floors and it will look like a cheap flip from 2018.
Things go in cycles.
insert Norman Rockwell Meme gray vinyl plank is awesome actually
Won't stain or scratch and easy to clean up any spills or messes no matter what the kiddos throw at it. And if I miss some mess it doesn't immediately show up with flashing lights like it might on something brighter.
Unfortunately, Mannington moved from China to Vietnam or vice versa a few years back and the product went to shit.
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I've always wanted to be able to refer to a family beach house.
My wife said when we got married and she started a new job, it felt so fucking good when partners would ask her what she was doing this weekend and she said "oh we're heading to our family's place at the shore" and she could watch people's assumptions about her adjust in real time.
That said, while I enjoy going there, it's almost certainly been a bad choice over time. Unless you're really committed to it, it ends up sitting empty too much to be worth it financially versus just getting a rental. The only real reason to do it is either as a flex, or because in the off-season you want somewhere to hide out and play the shitbird.
My friend from way back had a family beach house--it was right on the beach up from Eugene, Oregon though I don't remember the town--you could see the ocean right out the window, and to get to the sand and the water was a minute's walk down a short sloping hill. The beach was one of those long wide ones where you could splash your feet around, almost like a tidal flat--you'd go for meters until the water ever came as far as even your ankles. Truly beautiful. I stayed there once, two nights; we drank Full Sail bottled beers on the deck, ranged barefoot up and down the stretch of sand, flew kites, ate Mexican omelettes with homemade salsa and drank hot coffee there in the kitchen nook where you could watch the morning waves coming in. What a place.
They had money from a very well-known business owned by I think his grandfather, but something happened and there was a breakdown in relationships, and then everyone began squabbling over that house, and I think it was either sold or just torn down, or both. A terrible waste. My friend was (is) a very laid-back guy and just shrugged it off. Would have hurt me bad.
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Grey vinyl plank should have been banned before it ever hit the market. I think it had to do with that farmhouse kitsch thing that was popular a few years back. The thing that pissed me off about the whole trend more than anything else was that, having grown up in a semi-rural area, it looked nothing like any farmhouse I'd ever been in. I'm guessing that the grey is supposed to look like weathered wood? Except wood only looks like that if it's been outside for years, and wood from inside a house doesn't ever look like that. Luckily my house was built in the 1940s and has real hardwood, but if I didn't have it and couldn't afford to put it in, I'd at least pick something that imitates real wood. If it isn't already obvious from the material that it isn't real wood, I'm not going to let the color just give it away.
Engineered Wood floors look pretty good, and feel pretty good, though I'm skeptical of their durability as they're essentially a very thin veneer of very nicely finished plywood. But they're cheap and you get the ease of installation of snap in flooring.
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