Area Floors Finally Repaired!

Here's a quick picture post of the hardwood floors in our main rooms-- we intended to have this part done before we moved in 3 1/2 years ago, but better late than never!

Even after herculean efforts stripping off green paint, the living room floor was such a patchwork of previous owner asshattery that it couldn't be salvaged in situ.


Flooring torn out of living room, biggest holes in subflooring patched


Professionals laying new white oak flooring in living room (so Area Wife won't have the house taken apart for a year)




New living room floor abutting original dining room floor


A piece of the original white oak flooring from 1925


Fun pulling the nails out of all the old floorboards...


Some sanding, fruitwood stain and 3 coats of oil based polyurethane later, and the new living room floor is finished along with the original flooring in the dining room and hallway.

Quite a change from what it looked like when we first moved in, with laminate glued over the old painted flooring in the hallway, and cheap white carpeting hiding the rest of the mangled floors...


So the new wood doesn't take stain exactly like the 85 year old wood, but we're very pleased with the results. (Not to mention relieved to have it finally done!!!)




Closeup of transition to dining room floor-- the multi-clored boards at the top are the results of my feathering in old boards salvaged from the living room to patch a big hole from old ductwork in the dining room.


Here's the living room/hall transition


And here's all our furniture crammed into the office for 2 weeks!


Area kitty enjoying the new floor


Gratuitous picture of preying mantis eggsac affixed to a shrub in the back yard


Mom counting cross-stitches


Mom & dad trying out our favorite neighborhood walking trails

what's wrong with this picture?

I've been working on replacing a small section of hardwood flooring in the dining room that was an old duct patched with plywood. I figured it would be good practice for the more extensive floor repairs in the living room. So I bought some new 2 1/4 x 3/4 inch red oak flooring to fill the hole and feather in with the surrounding floorboards. The new and old boards' tongue & grooves fit together beautifully. The only problem is, when I line up the tongue & grooves along the length of the new and old boards, the tongue vs. groove on the ends of the boards don't match.

The original flooring in the house seems to have the ends of the floorboards milled backwards. (That, or each board was upside down when it had grooves milled into the underside???).

What the hell? Has anyone else heard of this happening?

So I guess this is why there was no apparent attempt by POs to make the newer hardwood on a third of the living room feather-into, or even line up with, the rest of the flooring in the room!

(Here's the living room now, with the bulk of our furniture crammed into the corner with the previous-owner-repaired flooring section that isn't painted green)

And here's the lovely line down the middle of the floor with misaligned (though exactly the same sized) boards:


So even though my original flooring is a standard size, I am not going to be able to use new flooring to make repairs and feather it in with the older floorboards the way I planned. (I'm tired of making splines and new grooves at the ends of the new floorboards to make them fit-- it's way too much work, though I am loving my $50 craigslist table saw :)).

This means a major change in strategy for re-doing the floors. I guess the new plan is to rip out some of the old living-room boards to patch the duct-holes. (I had hoped to use a few new boards to patch the duct holes before I had to start tearing up three quarters of the living room floor). Among other things, this means more of our floors are going to be torn up at any given time and we'll have to huddle against the walls for fear of falling.

white, white, white, white, white and white.

No, I'm not referring to the demographics of the somewhat surreal neighborhood we now live in-- it's also the color scheme championed by the previous owners of our house.








The rooms on the first floor have a great feel and amazing windows, but all the arts & crafts era wood and masonry have been doused in... white. The windows let SO much light into the rooms-- I don't know how anyone could have thought the place needed to be whiter. *sigh*



When I pulled back the white carpet, however, I found no shortage of colors.








Yep, the hardwood floors are painted mustard yellow and olive green!

And I'm not sure what this feature is supposed to be-- fringe at the edge of a painted-on rug??!!?