Whoa...those look exactly like our old original heartpine floors. I am so glad we saved them. I tore out several layers of plywood, linoleum, tar paper, carpet to get to the back hallway floor. It is beautiful now that it is sanded. Unless there is severe damage ( which is almost impossible as heart pine withstands pretty much anything) you can sand and seal with 4 coats poly and it will look like all the above. Also you can find salvage places with lots of the stuff and use it to patch ( we did that too) . You can also find many websites that have old heart pine for sale. First tear out and see what you have. You can e-mail me if you want more info. Good Luck, Caroline

Thanks! Keeping my fingers crossed!! How's your kitchen coming along?? You said you were having some problems... If most of the floor looks good, we will definitely do everything in our power to keep it...why people would put 5 layers of tile/rolled linoleum over this nice hardwood is beyond me...

Our contractor's coming in to start work mid-August, which is when we'll probably order cabinets. They should be in mid-October, so I'm hoping we'll be good to go by Thanksgiving dinner!!

:)
Sarah

We have an electrician finally ! He is great and very thorough so everything will be up to code when he leaves. We will then be able to sheetrock/paint and then have the cabs installed. They are being made by a local cab man who is wonderful. He took the salvage Arts and Craft windows I gave him and made 4 ft tall doors for the cupboards. I have vintage hardware from a company in Ohio. The cabs will be painted by my great local painter. He is really good and I am looking forward to choosing the final colors. I have been following the "white cab" discussions.

We made a sunroom off of the kitchen out of an old closed in porch and put the laundry stuff there too. We are also doing our masterbath. That is the end of things to do in the house when we finish this as we did the attic conversion 3 1/2 yrs ago. We then will do landscaping and a brick patio. Seems like it never ends !! I really want to see pics of your place. The floors are BEAUTIFUL. I would love to hear form you anytime so we can compare notes. Good Luck Caroline

I don't have a ton loaded into photobucket, so these may be repeats, but here's the exterior of the house:

Back in the 50's (we think...)

Here's the built-ins in the dining room...

and here's one of our original barn that burned in April '05. Closed off the main roads through town...had half a dozen fire companies here...very exciting stuff! We've since put up a 36X53 Morton Building (steel construction--for some reason i only have a rear pic), but it's just not the same...

:)
sarah

We have a 1915 craftsman and were able to refinish the douglas fir floors in our kitchen which were covered with a top layer of industrial carpet, on top of a black tar, on top of plywood, on top of more black gook with newspaper in it. We were able to strip the black goo and the residue sanded up fine. All the floors were sanded and two layers of clear sealer put on top. They look amazing imo.

If we weren't able to salvage the wood we were considering putting down slate tile in the kitchen. If you have to lay new hardwood, try to get wide plank and top nail, not tongue and groove.

Thanks for the hope, lisa!!! I already took the linoleum off myself, but DH now has to get two layers of plywood and one layer of school tile up...hopefully we'll know our floor's fate by this weekend!!
:)
sarah

Don't get new wood-- you're right they will look terribly out of place-- as well as not being as good-- the old floors were old growth wood, hard as nails.

Get salvage wood flooring from architectural salvage place--either something that matches exactly or contrasts with your existing flooring. It should be cheaper too although may be more labor intensive if you have to scrape or clean old crud from the tongue and groove.

Thanks kashka kat--see my saga about staples and our old hardwood floors on another thread...now I'm determined to keep those ratty old floors!!

-sarah

We had to, some of ours were bad.we had purchased wood floor from a company that restores old homes.Then we had them sanded,3 coats water based poly,We had the floor antiqued also so it looked old.Our home is 1700.Its been 14 years still look great.

YEA!!! We're keeping the floors!!! I could have KISSED John, our floor guy!!!!

He just took a walk through the gutted kitchen and neighboring rooms and decided that all of it (except for the living room, which is quartersawn oak on a diagonal) is southern yellow heartpine!! He said it's terribly hard to get these days without any knots--his best resource is a place down in Virginia that takes reclaimed wood like this out of old factories. Works out to be about $7 or $8 per square foot. We need a "new" section where one wall is being torn out of about 6' X 2', and he wants me to see what I can do about finding some. He said the stuff from the factories down south is good, but it does have more "character"--aka, knots--than what we currently have.

Caroline--where did you say you got your reclaimed wood?? I don't need much in this case and would love to find some of this era that would "match" pretty well!

I guess our dining room (second picture down) had been stained a darker color and then treated with some chemical varnish stuff back in the 70's or 80's--probably the previous owners DIY project, he suspects. That's why some of us were thinking it was fir--but he said it most definitely is not.

I'm just excited because I finally know what everything is in the house and can have some continuity of color/appearance when these floors are done. We may (or may not, depending on price) have the dining room done at the same time as the kitchen, simply because they run into each other and there would be a really severe break where one stops and the other begins.

Gotta go finish pulling my last two pieces of plywood with staples...I'm on the home stretch!!

Now I'm just torn between finishes--originally I wanted tung oil, DH wants basketball-court like polyurethane, and now I'm leaning towards Waterlox as a compromise. John is willing to do any of the above, and actually thinks Waterlox would fit the house the best. Opinions??

I will absolutely post pictures throughout the whole process if anyone's interested. Thanks for everyone's help, suggestions, and support!!!

:)
Sarah

Oh...and in case you didn't see the pics of all of the staples we are ripping out, here you go--I guarantee you've never seen more staples in a floor in your LIFE!!!

:)
lucky us...

sara : how is it coming ? We have 3 sections of scaffolding set up on the 1 st of the 3 sisters at the fornt of the house. We are scraping and getting it ready to paint. I have the job of stripping all the delicate trim and then painting it the 3 colors I have chosen. Hope your floor is lookin' good !!! Caroline

Oh...thanks for reminding me, Caroline!! We are TOTALLY DONE with demolition!! All staples out!!! Figured out there were approximately 90 staples in each square foot...and we have about 300sf in that kitchen...which comes out to be 27,000 staples we just removed! And on all of the seams, the staples were touching each other all the way down the edges of the plywood. Not to mention the nails underneath that layer.

Phew...but it's all done. My elbows and back and stomach are KILLING ME, but we are done. I'll post pics later (maybe tomorrow). Looks FANTASTIC to me--I just can't help but smile everytime I'm in there and get all giddy with excitement--but I'm sure everyone that walks in says, "What a hole!" under their breath!

The REALLY good news is that our fabulous old-house contractor got his fabulous hardwood floor guy to come in and look at it, and he said straight-away that all of the floors in our house (except the diagonal quarter-sawn oak in the LR) are Southern Yellow Heartpine (longleaf, I think he said), which is ridiculously expensive to try and replace. He didn't even suggest it!! He will refinish however we want...sent me to see a job on the same wood in an old house two towns away...looked gorgeous!! I can't wait!! Our dining room floor had been stained a dark brown, and then coated with a chemical poly back in the 70's or 80's, which is why it looked more like fir than pine. So he'll do both of those rooms at the same time.

Now if I could only decide between a Waterlox finish and a satin poly....

:)

Do you have any pics of the progress on the front of your house? Sounds like it would be fun to watch!! And what colors did you choose?

Sarah

Sarah, it's so cool to follow your progress.

I am so glad your floor is going to work out. I sure had my fingers crossed for you. I took pics of the guys on the scaffold yesterday...noone took any of me up there this AM working on the "frilly trim" !! I am no good at posting pics but get my DH to download them to our computer at least so sometime when we are all done I will post a mish mash of photos from photobucket if I can figure out how !!

Our house is a beige siding (upper story is original heart ine and lower story is masonite put on in the 80's by PO) and darker beige trim. We decided in the interest of effort expended to keep it the same except for the frills in the 3 sisters. Those I am going to paint the three colors that are in our original stained glass doors. It is a rich lapis blue, bright grass green and butter yellow. The windows have the round (bottle bottoms ) that are the yellow and the house trim has the same figure in the cutouts. So we will sort of match and just really do a fun intricate painting of this feature to compensate for the other monochromatic paint job. I am enjoying your progress too ! We got behind with our electrical this week ...again...so we are not going to get the sheetrock started next week as we had hoped. May be by Christmas we'll have a kitchen !! Good Luck to you and can hardly wait to see finished floors. Caroline