My Stuga Journey: Harbor Floors One Year Later

Written by Mallory Recor

About the Author: Mallory Recor is a Stuga blog contributor and former design consultant. A long-time lover of all things design, she has lived all over the world and is building a cozy home in northern Michigan. You can find her on Instagram at @malloryrecor.

It's been a year since we moved to northern Michigan and into our minimal English country-inspired home. We’ve had time to settle in, hang a few things on the walls, and live out four seasons in this home, yet not a week goes by that I don’t think about the feature that kickstarted the entire design: Our Harbor floors. You’ve been with me through the selection and installation processes, but today I’m reporting back to dish about living with Stuga floors. Spoiler alert: We are so happy.

How Well Do Stuga Floors Hold Up?

Because our Stuga floors are a living piece of our home, one of the questions we get most is, " How are they holding up?" Let me preface this with a few details about our home. We built the house on 11 acres in rural Michigan, and let’s just say our landscape has a lot of room for improvement (this year we focused on re-growing ground cover). I have two young boys who love to play outside and are digging a pond in our woods. I also have a lovable 75-pound mutt who enjoys running in our less-than-grassy backyard and two cats who do their fair share of shedding. Our house sees a lot of dirt and mess.

In the past, I’ve lived with dark tiled floors that put every footprint on display, inexpensive LVP that felt as cheap as it cost, and carpet that was like a sponge. Walking barefoot on our Harbor floors has been nothing short of amazing, and I am so happy to say that they have held up beautifully.

How To Care For Your Stuga Floors

Since we built this house ourselves, we were able to make sure the care and maintenance of our floors was as easy as possible. Here, we have snow, mud, rain, dirt, and sand, and because of this, a mudroom entrance, complete with an easy-to-clean tile floor was necessary. I didn’t want to bring in anything that could damage our floors. Plus, we went for a stapled installation, so we were able to create a seamless transition from the mudroom to our hardwood floors, and again from the hardwood to the tiled bathrooms. No transition pieces were necessary.

The rich mid-tone brown of the oak is great at camouflaging pet hair, dirt, and dust that inevitably gets in. I try to run our robot vacuum once a day on the main floor and vacuum the upstairs, where our bedrooms are, weekly. I’ve had to spot-clean a few places with Stuga’s floor cleaner from time to time, usually in the kitchen. And just over a year after installation, I’m getting ready to reapply the satin oil for the very first time in a few, high-traffic spots.

How Durable are Oak Floors?

Because we have pets and small children, people always want to know about scratches. We do have scratches on our floors, and I’m okay with that. The thing I love the most about the oiled finish of Harbor is that it minimizes them. Yes, they’re still visible to the discerning eye, but I view them as part of our home’s story. It’s the patina and proof of life I’m striving for as I make this house a home.

Overall, our Stuga floors have held up wonderfully. We’ve been so happy with them and have received compliments from everyone who has stopped by. They feel great underfoot and are aging well.

Final Verdict

If I could, I’d give our floors 5 gold stars. We adore the richness and grounding effect that brown hardwood floors give to our home. Walking barefoot in our house is a treat and it feels like we are one step closer to nature due to the hand-scraped character. The natural variation from board to board shows that these floors have had a life before us, and the quality means they will go on living a life after us.

Harbor is easy to care for, a pleasure to walk on, will look great for decades, and set the groundwork for a home we love more and more every day.