Where the room started
Our before photos show an upper-floor room under a sloped ceiling, with worn red oak strip flooring and the baseboards already pulled off. A bare patched strip ran along the bottom of every wall, and the window sill held a level and tools from the prep work.
Old strip oak can sometimes be sanded and refinished. When the boards are worn thin, stained or gapped from years of heat and dry winters, new flooring over the top often gives a better result for the money and time.
New plank flooring
We installed dark espresso wood-look plank flooring across the room. The dark tone grounds a small room with light walls, and the wood-look surface stands up to toys, furniture legs and spills better than an old oak finish.
Before laying planks over an old floor, we check it for high spots, loose boards and squeaks, and screw down anything that moves. A new floor is only as quiet as the one under it.
We ran the planks the long way through the room, parallel to the longest wall. That makes a narrow room under a slope look longer and keeps the number of short cut pieces at the walls down.
Baseboards, paint and window
New white baseboards cover the expansion gap at the walls and give the room a clean line where the floor meets the paint. We painted the walls a warm blush-beige that suits a kids room and still works as the child grows.
The white door, trim and double-hung window tie back to the baseboards, so the room has one trim colour all the way around. We caulked the top edge of each baseboard and filled the nail holes before the final coat, so the trim reads as one clean band.
Working with a sloped ceiling
Sloped ceilings cut into usable wall space. Put the bed or low dressers under the slope, and keep the tall furniture on the full-height walls. Light walls and a light ceiling help a room like this feel bigger, and a dark floor gives it a base.
If you are refreshing several upper-floor rooms, run the same flooring through all of them. The floors read as one, and you avoid transition strips at every doorway.
