Floor Progress

What else have we been doing you dare ask? Dealing with the plague that is old, dirty wall to wall carpeting! Hardwood here we come!

Prepping the floors for refinishing has been a month long project. We started ripping up the 2nd and 3rd floor carpets (including stairs and landings) before Christmas and we're in the final stretch! Ted has done the majority of it on the weekends and I've been pitching in when not at work. The steps going up to the 2nd floor are oak treads with chestnut risers, the 2nd floor hallway is a lovely hardwood floor (I think the floor guy said walnut) with an inlaid border installed above pine subflooring. And alas, the bedrooms are just the pine subflooring. but in great shape and they’ll look great once their refinished and stained.

Bless my husband for rip-roaring abilities. He started with the red carpet in the attic, which had padding under it that had disintegrated into an awful black powder. Here's to wearing a respirator! From there we went room by room and ripped, hammered, scraped, and pried out layers of carpet, linoleum, and adhesive. Absolutely disgusting. Oh, but we also found some treasure under the linoleum in what will become the master bedroom. A bunch of newspaper from 1954! What a fun, fun treasure!

We finally got the floors to the state that you see in this picture. Now we're fixing loose floorboards and squeaky floors in preparation for floor refinishing, which should happen within the next two weeks. In the picture, Ted is tightening up loose and squeaky floorboards with finishing nails.



Unlike the roof, floor finishing does not have to be budget breaker. We're doing the prep work ourselves because we don't want to pay a professional to do something we're capable of. And according to the floor guy who came out for the refinishing estimate, we'll be saving quite a bit!