One random Saturday afternoon, my husband decided to lift up some of the carpet in our house to discover hardwood floors. It was something we always wondered if we might have as the house was built sometime in the 50's and has been remodeled by previous owners. I am not sure what prompted him to check, but after discovering what we found, we could not help but wonder why we waited this long to finally look!
Glorious, beautiful, full of character, REAL hardwood floors! We were quite thrilled!
But as many DIY projects go, we also revealed some surprises along the way...sections of wood that had been taken out to remodel and left with plywood under the carpet. The largest spot being about a ten foot section in front of our sliding glass door.
So the fun began. We put in an order of new hardwood to replace the patches that needed to be fixed. And we slowly started to replace each section. These are old hardwood floors so we are talking about pulling out and re-hammering nails into every. single. board. Oh fun.
Brent has to do pretty much this entire project himself unfortunately. So I am on clean up duty and filling in nail holes.
So despite all the work, the potential of this space was already being seen. Just being able to look at all my white decor against that beautiful wood got me very excited. Even in it's mess the room feels so much bigger than before.
And I am also on camera duty of course. This is my work out clothes by the way, as opposed to my spy clothes.
After pulling up the carpet in the dining room we decided to continue it through the hallway. We discovered two more patches that need to be fixed. There is hardwood also in the bedrooms but we are keeping the carpet in there at this point. The downstairs living room is a garage conversion so it does not have the original hardwood. So for now, this is what the work consists of.
A few weeks later, which consisted of taking out plywood, waiting for new wood to arrive, and putting in the new wood, we finished the biggest job of redoing this large section.
We tried to stagger some of the new wood with the old wood in hopes of creating a more unified look between the wood but we won't find out exactly how that will all pan out until we sand and refinish the entire floor.
This was the status of our floors for a couple weeks. We took a break in order to prep for my Valentine's Party and then the following weekend we helped my mom at her flower shop for Valentine's Day.
Since then, we got out of the groove a little in getting a ton done each weekend but it is slowly coming along. One more patch got fixed recently and we are currently working on the last section down the hallway.
That section against the wall behind the dining table is actually where a fireplace hides behind the wall. We are leaving that section unfinished in hopes of recovering the fireplace next. We are not quite sure the condition of it but we can see the brick behind a storage cabinet in our laundry room which shares the other side of the wall. Crossing our fingers we have a lovely fireplace addition someday...
It's no surprise that this project has become a much bigger one than we intended. But the positive aspect of being patient through the process is that the space is still livable. We still have people over and I still decorate. It is not a total eye sore. And we throw runners over in progress sections so my nephew isn't tripping all over it. So hopefully in a few weeks we will finish the floor repair and will tackle refinishing it all.
And one of my favorite parts about having hardwood floors? Being able to work out! No more catching my shoes on carpet or running around barefooted. I love being able to jump around the house more often now...and even jump rope in our dining room! It feels really epic as a workout-aholic. It's the little things.
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