New Floors!

It's been a long time coming, but we finally had our hardwood floors downstairs refinished. We went through 4-5 different companies before settling on one who specialized in historical renovations. Our floors are Heart Pine, a specific type of wood used widely in New England in the 19th century, dating our  floors to about 1840. How cool is that?? It also meant that restoring them would be pricey, so we opted to do as little replacing as possible.

Our darling flipper friend pulled up a wall and replaced a huge chunk of floor with laminate, so that was the first to go. It had buckled the floor (seeing as it wasn't even nailed down) so over time, it was creating a trip hazard between the living and dining room.

I hates it, Momma. I hates it.

As you can see in the pictures, there is a definite divide between the two rooms. Our plan was to use new boards to create a threshold. We ripped up the crappy baseboards to make this easier...LOTS more on this coming soon.

It took four days - one for repair, sand and first coat of urethane, and then three days of subsequent sanding and coats - of us being out of the house. It made for a stressful Christmas week, though we have to give Chris' parents a holla for taking us and los Pomeranians in for a whole week. We stopped in to the house every night to check in. Here's the summary:

Tuesday - SO yellowy after the first sand:

Wednesday: A bit darker. 

 Thursday: More of the same, a bit darker with curing time. 

 FINISHED: Beautifully shiny hardwood floors that we DO NOT trip over as often. The floor guys have yet to solve our klutziness. These are knockout beautiful. 

 

 To celebrate, we will NOT be replacing our massive 9x13 rug - instead, we found these perfect little jobbies to anchor our couches to the floor. No scratching, no wandering furniture, no problems. We are so glad this finally got done!

Tomorrow - baseboard update!