This is what the floor looked like under those ugly tiles:
Very thick, very hard, very old oak boards, painted barn red, which has worn away over the almost-century this floor's been down. I actually kind of love it. Except for that blue patch, which is part of where the sink rotted and some of the color leached out of the tiles (oh yeah, I guess there was also blue). I particularly like how it goes all wonky in places, and you can tell where the old back door used to be.
I wanted to just leave it as it is, but everyone -- but everyone -- gasps and cringes when I say so. Plus, it is kind of hard to get the Christmas jimmies out of the cracks between the floorboards after the Football Buddy comes.
Although the Dirty Devil does a much better job at it than the Eurekan old one used to do.Right now, I think the consensus is that we'll give it a light sand (that is: we will someday, not now, pay someone else to give it a light sand) and see what we think about it after that. If it's passable, we'll varnish and leave it. If not, Johnny will paint it red again. We will not tear it out or cover over.
Oh, but that grey stripe down the left side of that top picture there? That's Durock. Slight miscalculation regarding the little kickspace under the cabinets. I don't know what we're going to do with that.
Any suggestions?
6 comments:
get some trim...I will ask my Joe- trim is his specialty...love the floors painted red- you should make em red again!!!!
Great floorboards. I was really sad that ours were too damaged to sand and polish. I can't quite figure out the grey stripe. I can't work out if it's a horizontal or vertical grey bit. So the solution of course would be different depending on the answer to that. It may be my eyes, it's Friday at the end of a very long work week.
ATS -- Trim? For the floor? Really? Huh. The only idea we've come up with so far is that ugly black rubber grip stuff.
TOB -- It is flat, on a plane with the floor, but perpendicular to the floorboards. And it's THURSDAY!
oh man just throw some plastic wood in there sand 'em, seal em and call it a day. That's what they did here 20 years ago and they just started looking like crap 5-6 years ago. No one here ever thinks to take off or wipe a dirty shoe when they walk in and there are 50 people in and out of here every day (been thru 5 vacs and two kitchen floors since I've lived here as evidence to the heavy traffic here). So your place with 1/3 of the traffic should be fine for 50 years! You won't give a sh*t about it by then!
Ooooh -- that exactly how most of our upstairs floors looked when ripped up the carpets and linoleum. We hired out the refinishing and it's a total miracle what they turned into! All that expensive retrofit hardwood flooring doesn't hold a candle to our cheaply refinished old ones!! And if you can DIY the refinishing job -- I would choose this any day of the week rather than painting them red!
Congrats on your wood floor treasure!
Joe said take out the durock and replace it with a piece of oak...reclaimed aged oak if you can get it...all along where the durock was- after finishing floors, it will look a lot better than durock or rubber-
If he lived nearby..I am sure he would be able to really tell you what to do..
xo amy
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