Good As New Kitchen Floor

After 5 layers of carpeting and tile, scraping, staple-pulling, sanding, staining and finishing...the kitchen floor is done! And it is gorgeous! Mahogany stain, original oak flooring from 1836.

Not bad for a floor that looked like this 2 weeks ago:

And this 4 months ago:

Window Washing

Jarrod washing windows

It is absolutely shocking the difference clean windows has made in the light! It's night and day.

Adventures in Industrial Sanding

The kitchen floor has now been stripped down to the original wood. But since it was coated in glue and paper from an old tiling job that had been down for who knows how many decades (or centuries!) there was no question we needed to do some heavy duty sanding. 

Before

So we rented this guy:

And as you can see, the floor looks a hundred times better!

As you would expect, there was a terrible amount of dust so we did a lot to try and cut down the filth in the cabinets and the rest of the house.

The only issue was that the sander doesn't reach all the way into the corners and along the perimeter so we bought a belt sander to do the edges.
And since we had the sander for the weekend, we went ahead and did the entryway as well. It had a very dated orangey finish to it that is going to be stained darker to match all the other wood floors.

Plaster Perfect

As you know, several of the rooms needed a lot of plaster repair before we could move forward. The walls were full of cracks due to the extreme temperature fluctuations from the house sitting empty for years with no heat. In addition to cracks, there were also a number of pretty major holes in the walls and ceilings that needed patched. Happily, most of that is under way if not complete.

This is a terrifying staircase to put a ladder on! Best left to the pros.

Kitchen Floor

We have taken up I believe 5 layers of flooring in this kitchen. I will detail all those in a forthcoming post. What we are left with is the original wood flooring, loaded up with staples, nails, glue and paper left over from the tile backing. We have literally removed hundreds of staples by hand. The glue and paper came up fairly well with a vinegar/water solution and putty knives. But this is still a rough floor in need of some serious work.

Note the paint line on the baseboard in the background. That's how much floor has come up!

 An industrial sander is on tap for next weekend. Pics to come!

The Dining Room

The dining room now has a couple fresh coats of paint. The color is Pier by Behr. The woodwork is Falling Snow by Behr. We were also fortunate enough to get that terrible carpet up this weekend. And by the grace of God it looks like a really decent, handsome wood floor.

(The pup can't stand to be left at home while we're over here working! But he is sad we took up the carpet.)