Hello!

I’ve been remodeling our 1930s Dutch Colonial home (I don’t want to say for how long, lol). At this point I’m putting the finishing touches on the entry room and I’m struggling with what I should use for flooring as well as general finishing touches. Here are my main concerns with this room:

1. Vermont, tracking in wet snow and salt
2. The floor joists are only 1×6, although rough cut. I’m worried about the strength of the floor if I were to use tile
3. The layout of the room is awkward for an entryway. It’s about 13 x 17 with a staircase at one end. By awkward I mean it’s big for an entryway.

I’ve thought about using two types of flooring to give it the feel of an entry area and maybe a sitting/reading area. There is also a set of stairs to deal with, the dimension from the the front of the room to those stairs is about 14′. I was originally thinking about matching the flooring with the stairs in some way, but now I’m thinking I’ll match the stair treads with the flooring on the second floor (not sure what that will be yet).

So I’d say it boils down to two questions.

1. What to use for flooring
2. Techniques for using the room for two purposes (entry and reading)

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you very much. We’re getting excited about finally having this house finished.