Good news (only slightly OT)

16 years ago

We are in the final stages of clearing out my daughter's old room (since she's now very happily upstairs and we are reclaiming her old room as a music room). One of the things we've been wondering what to do about is the FLOOR - as a music room, we need a hard floor for acoustic purposes but there was carpet over it when we bought in 2004 which, although I hate carpet, was newly installed so we just left it, and we figured there must be something gross under it so have been less than hopeful (if you hit that sentence hard enough with a hammer it DOES make sense lol)

SURPRISE!!!

The original wood floor.

It will need refinishing at some point for sure, but even now it is TOTALLY useable as far as we can see (we haven't finished pulling up the carpet so there may be a horror somewhere in the corner, but so far so good). AND (this is the important thing, really) it appears to match the wood in the living room - I have wanted to put french doors between those two rooms to make it possible to open both of them out into a bigger space but one of the stumbling blocks was the floors. But it turns out they're THE SAME WOOOD! I'm thrilled.

If this turns out to be under the layers in the kitchen too (see? Only SLIGHTLY OT :), then the new dining room will also have the same wood (although I'm less hopeful about that, since it looks like something may have been nailed over it at some point, plus we're changing the footprint by taking down the wall and blahblahblah. We'll see when we pull it up, I guess!)

In any case, that wood floor makes me ABSURDLY happy and I have been bouncing since we found it last night. Tragic, ain't it?!!!

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Comments (11)

fnzzy
16 years ago
wow!!! what a find!
claybabe
16 years ago
LOL Fabulous!! I can just see those french doors offering a glimpse into the gleaming music room...!
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vjrnts
16 years ago
That happened to me, too, in my old house. I took up the most horrible nasty carpet to find worn but perfectly fine 1.3" red oak.

And then this summer, when they were taking up the floor in the kitchen and the breakfast room, we discovered red oak in the breakfast room too! It was all painty and filthy, but it refinished beautifully!

Aren't these kinds of things fun?
divamum
Original Author
16 years ago
Well, we've discovered one place where it looks like some kind of repeated wear has grooved it down, but other than that... it looks pretty much exactly like yours!

We won't be able to finish it immediately simply because we MUST use the space to clear the room which is going to become the kitchen but.. baby steps. It's there, it's useable and it's sooo much nicer than the carpet. I really really REALLY hate carpet :)
pcjs
16 years ago
We had the same thing, but no hardwood in the kitchen. We pulled the carpeting out as it was nasty when we moved in - all but a few areas are in really good shape and we'll refinish it at some point.
tetrazzini
16 years ago
If I were you, I would have pried up a section of kitchen floor already! I wouldn't be able to wait to find out...
Even if you take down a wall and there's a strip without flooring, you can fill it in. It might match well enough that it's hardly noticeable. Hopefully all the floorboards are running the same way.
divamum
Original Author
16 years ago
Well, unfortunately I can't GET at the kitchen floor or I would have! We've looked at it as far as we can - no doubt there's wood there, the question is just whether or not it's been nailed through and ruined or not :(

This is what we found in the other room:

A shame about this (and how do I go about restoring this as much as is possible? The only thing I'm worried about is SPLINTERS, because the gouge is fairly deep - I don't care if it looks its age!)

Sooo much nicer than that ucky, icky, grubby, dusty carpet. I'm now hoping that the section in the hall just outside the room will also have wood - I pulled up a corner and it looks hopeful, but I have a feeling the original heating vent was there and if it was removed at some point it means there will be a big gap in the middle. Here's hoping!
imrainey
16 years ago
Wonderful! You'll be amazed at what a good flooring guy can do to bring a wood floor back!
bunglogrl
16 years ago
What a lucky find! You may end up replacing a few gouged slats -- or simply flipping them over (that's what we ended up doing when we ran out of cash for new boards!)
divamum
Original Author
16 years ago
OOO.... flip them over - there's a thought! It's going to be a while till we can get to details like "floor refinishing" (and, to be frank, the room is small we were going to attempt it as a DIY job so who knows when we'll finally get to it!), but this is great info. Thanks!
pcjs
16 years ago
Lowes has sanders that are supposed to be easy to use and are not the belt sanders that do the harsh damage - we're going to try it in one room and see how it goes once we are done with the walls.

Good news (only slightly OT)

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fnzzy

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