As a follow up, here is how it looked before I ripped up the carpet:

How many square feet is it? Have a wood floor expert come out and quote it. We did something similar, but I can't for the life of me remember the cost, and it was only about a 10x10' bedroom (half refinished, half replaced entirely).

craftsman? then you have what looks like oak or doug fir. it looks to be in some rough shape tho. Doesn't mean it can't be done, just means you need someone who knows what they're doing. cross your fingers and hope it goes all the way across! (if not, they can patch it).

depending on how many times it's been done in the last 100 years, will determine if it's doable again. but sorry, 2K will not be enough (unless it's just a small room)

Your best bet is to call in a floor refinish expert. not joe blow wood floor guy. find a company that has experience refinishing old floors. get a few quotes from diff people. see what they tell you.

btw, if you redo those floors and don't go dark, you're going to have to do the baseboards too. Or you could paint them. looks like someone did all the wood in there in a very very dark stain. if you could learn how to strip it and take it back to the way it's supposed to look, you'd be amazed at what it would look like

Those floors look pretty rough. There are huge gaps between the boards. A fall back position would be to paint the floors to match the baseboards if sanding and refinishing them is too costly.

Hahaha, Jill, very funny story!

Unfortunately refinishing floors is not cheap. I'd get a professional in for their opinion and estimate to refinish, then save up until you can do it properly.

Belated happy birthday.

Are those "stains" or are they where the finish put on the hardwood has been altered? Touch the flooring and see if you can feel an edge to the dark part as you might if it were paint.

Some hardwood flooring is really thin. Trying to sand it yourself could give you an uneven floor just by holding the electric sander in the same place too long.

At least get some estimates to see how much having a pro do it right will cost you. Hiring a pro would be the safe way to go.

However, since you clearly want that carpet gone ... yesterday ...

If you want to restore the hardwood flooring as a DIY project, and if you're willing to live with the damaged hardwood flooring for a time to do this, I'd think that you might be able to strip the original brown finish off yourself with the right product … and plenty of ventilation: you'll need to open all the windows and doors you can while using chemicals and should wear eye protection and plastic gloves.

Not a fan of carpet. Period.

Personally, I'd prefer to live with the damaged hardwood flooring -- even for a long while, that's even without pets living with me) -- while I researched information on how to do the work myself (rather than live with pet hairs and otherwise pet affected carpet).

Perhaps you could create a humorous sign:

"don't be floored by our latest DIY project" and start ripping up carpet today --at least in that one room.

Take a picture of the flooring to a hardware store and/or paint center and ask what they believe the brown finish to be and what would be the best product to remove it.

Test the product you bring home on a small section of the flooring before trying to do the entire room. Begin in an out of the way corner where furniture would definitely cover the spot if you make an error and, following the instructions on the container, remove some of the finish from the flooring. Then let it dry a day before judging the results.

Good luck w/your project. do keep us updated.

Just a guess but that hardwood flooring is probably tongue&grooved lumber; and if so, indented spaces between boards could simply be a result of rounded corners on each board.

If, however, there are wide cracks and you can see between the boards to any sub flooring, that could require some repair work.

Wow lucky find, sounds like a nice birthday. If this was mine I would rip out all the carpet and live with the rough wood floors knowing that I was saving to get them refinished. Bring in a couple good flooring companies to know how much you need to save. While saving I would take Beth’s advice and start working on all the baseboards.

Mostly looks like the finish has lifted in those 'stained' areas. Probably was finished with shellac. If so, shellac sands of easily and generally doesn't cause any adhesion issues.

Nobody can predict future but w/knowledge you have now, I’d base decision of refinishing vs living w/carpet on how long you plan to be in this house.

as others say, professional refinishing is pricey, So consider that animal claws are brutal on wood. Pricey refinish vs animal damage don’t go together.

Thank you all so much for your comments! I looked at it closer and I think you are all right that the “stains” are just where the stain has come off. That makes me happy because that seems to be an easier fix than actual stains. I put the carpet back in place for now while I try to figure out what we want to do. I think I’d be cool living with the hardwood as-is until we can afford to fix it the right way, but I think my husband would prefer to leave the carpet in place until we can hire a professional. He has a good point, in that the the carpet is fairly new, while the floors need a lot of work. I’ll accept his logic until maybe the next time I’ve had one too many glasses of wine :)

I don’t know what kind of wood it is. I’m not very knowledgeable in this area. We just moved into the house a couple months ago. The house was built in 1895. I’ve been trying to learn more about the houses from that time period, which has been a lot of fun. If the hardwood is the original, I definitely want to make sure I wait until I can afford to hire a professional. There are many DIY projects I’m willing to try, but if I ruined the floors trying to do this myself, I’d be very sad!

I’ll post some updates when I figure out what we’re going to do. Thanks again for all of the comments and ideas. I love the Houzz community!

I’d be very, very tempted to rip out the carpets, clean the wood floors as well as I could - and live with them. Much preferred to the carpet, IMO :)

If you have any sandpaper, and feel like sanding a larger area - maybe a foot square - so we could see the grain, we might be able to ID it for you. Douglas Fir has very little grain and is softer than oak. There are red oak and white oak floors, and they are harder than the fir. These are some pics from the web; do any of them look like what you can see closeup?Don't look at the colors,as they have stain on then - just the grain. This link tells you how to distinguish red oak from white. My 1937 Cape has both oak and Douglas Fir.

http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/distinguishing-red-oak-from-white-oak/

Douglas fir -

White Oak -

Red oak -

A quick way to tell if you have enough in your budget to deal with these floors properly is to estimate $5/sf for refinishing. So a 1000sf redo = $5K. A 1400sf redo = $7K. And 2000sf = $10K.

So far, your budget of $2000 is enough to deal with 350 - 400sf. That's about the size of a regular living room. That would get 1 (large) room finished or two bedrooms...that's about it.

As much fun as it will be to bring these floors back to their glory (it is VERY satisfying to see it done), I would sit back and wait until you can be assured you have enough in the bank before going forward.

Right now the carpets are very pretty and are paid for (in the mortgage). So you might as well use them until they can't be used any more. Get every penny out of the carpets because you will need many more pennies to get this floor back to being a floor and not a subfloor.

One subject to investigate is try to see if you have any large plywood patches in the floor. It is very discouraging to tear out carpet like crazy and then find a section of filler that doesnt match. The floor register I see looks older so perhaps the ductwork hasnt been modified. Many older systems had a single large air return where newer systems might have more returns spread out in different locations. If you have basement access, look for any obvious subfloor changes as the hardwood is likely not matching in that spot. Also lift the register and see how much wood is available to sand. Houses before 1900 might have flooring slightly thicker than the 3/4 inch typical today.

In my area, $2k would get you a midrange sand and refinish job for the foyer, living room and dining room of a typical older house. That isnt going to get you a magazine quality floor but it would be respectable looking and have enough room for replacement of a couple damaged boards.

Renovation funds are not an endless resource and taking a couple more years of savings to afford a top notch floor guy might not be right for your situation. Especially with older houses, you have to be sensitive to the quality, condition, size and market value of the house. A large, elaborate house of that era might have inlaid borders and beautiful, quartersawn oak while a working class house might be lower quality wood (still better than today) in a plain pattern. Ordinary houses had ordinary, serviceable floors, not wow factors. Old houses can be a money pit and unless your pockets are deep, you will have to set priorities and compromise on some things. Your lifestyle is important too, how much do you wish to fuss over the house? Is it your dream spare time project or uggh another weekend working on the house instead of going on a bike ride or picnic?

Because you were all so kind to comment on this back in June, I thought I’d provide an update. I had someone come out to give us a quote sometime in early July and they quoted around $2,000 to do the dining room, living room and front entryway (about 545 square feet total). They also confirmed the floors were heart pine and, at the time, said they were in good shape.

Given that I had said I wanted to keep it around $2k, I was pretty excited! I should note that I live in a low cost of living area (Dayton Oh area), which may be why it was so much lower than some people had estimated on here. I booked the appointment for the week of August 20.

The floor people came yesterday and delivered the sad news. After pulling up the carpet in two of the three rooms, they determined the floor is too weak to be refinished in its current state. It is not the boards themselves, but there are areas where sections of the floor had been cut out in order to install vents. This weakened those sections of the floor and he did not think these areas could handle the weight of the sander in their current state. In the third room, they started to pull up the carpet, but realized there were a few layers of paperback linoleum glued down. They said we would have to have this removed before they could evaluate that section, but based on the other two rooms, I assume that room would have the same issue.

On the plus side, after looking at the floors, he felt confident that the floors were the originals, meaning they had survived the great Dayton flood of 1913, which is something I had been wondering about. He also said he did not believe the floors were beyond saving if this is something we wanted to take on, but said we would need to add some additional support underneath the floors before they could be refinished. One of the issues is that there is no subfloor (or rather the hardwood is the subfloor), so adding the additional support would require adding support beams underneath, which could be costly.

The other option is to put flooring on top of the hardwood, which would add more strength and resolve the current issue. He did not recommend leaving the floors as-is (now w/o the carpet) without adding strength either in the form of additional support under the floor or flooring materials on top.

I love that the wood is original and I would love to save and restore it, but I think the cost and scope of that project would be more than I want to take on right now. So until then, we decided we are going to go with the more cost-efficient option and install flooring on top of the boards, but we’re still getting rid of the carpeting!! I want to do as little additional damage to the floors as possible, so we’re going to do a floating floor. We’re going to try to DIY this, so I’m sure I’ll be posting more questions about this on Houzz soon! :)

I’d love to revisit restoring the originals floors down the road once some of the projects requiring more immediate attention are finished. Or at a minimum, do no further damage so perhaps the next owners can consider taking on this project.

Thanks again to everyone who weighed in on this!! Im disappointed that the project isn’t going in the direction I originally intended, but I’m still super excited to replace the carpeting!!

I am sure you are disappointed at that news. I hope you can take comfort from the fact that your chosen floor guys handled the situation in a professional manner and knew enough to stop work. Some people ignore the issues and continue until they have created a real mess and possibly caused permanent damage.

If you have access to the underneath of those floors, you may be able to add support to the underside with a reasonable amount of effort if the ductwork is not in the way. You may wish to have someone evaluate the structure if the previous HVAC people cut floor joists to install ductwork. If you have sagging and unlevel floors, you want to correct that issue before tackling other areas. Don't proceed in other directions and plan to tackle that issue later, it is essential to take care of this type of issue as soon as possible.

"This weakened those sections of the floor and he did not think these areas could handle the weight of the sander in their current state"

I'm new to this thread and ignorant of floor finishing generally but this doesn't make sense to me. These areas around the vents must be relatively small. Could the boards be sanded in those areas with a hand sander?

It's a very pretty house, I can't wait to see how you finish your floors. And I loved the story of how the ripping up of the carpet came about!

I was wondering the same thing about a lighter sanding process around the vents. I’m thinking of getting a second opinion before I decide what to do. It’s tough because I’m getting impatient and just want to see the finished product, but I don’t want to make a bad decision because I couldn’t wait a few more weeks!

While yes, it would be possible to use a different sander in those areas, I wouldn't head that direction if I had other options. First, the price quote was for doing the entire interior of the room with the big machine. If a smaller machine was used, the labor cost would increase and the refinishing will be more money.

If you are looking to use stain on the floor, different machines remove material differently and if the surface isn't machined with the same equipment, it won't absorb stain consistently. It isn't just the grit used, it is the brand of paper, the type of abrasive, the speed and direction of movement, and any other seemingly unimportant detail that actually will impact the finish surface. If you have ever seen a floor with a darker or lighter perimeter, that is the result of trying to stain two unequal materials. I had noticed the picture frame effect on floors over the years and didn't know the cause the first few times I saw that, typically in properties for sale with listings touting newly refinished floors. The darker the planned stain, the more noticeable those surface irregularities that become glaring issues. Without stain, those issues will not be nearly as obvious and perhaps not visible at all to the untrained eye.

Another concern is movement of the floor while being sanded. If the floor has boards not securely attached, the sander will bounce slightly and leave horizontal lines or longer waves in the surface. That is usually described as chatter and is sometimes visible on wood moldings as well.

Awww....can we talk you out of spending your fix-it money on a new floor? In your position, with the history that you're aware of, I would just consider it an ongoing project...

Well, if the floor can't stand the weight of a sanding machine, it certainly can't stand the weight of a person.

I believe what he's worried about is that ends of boards are hanging loose and the sander would be more aggressive on some than on others because they'd flex more. Valid point.

After you refinish, you're certainly going to have area rugs over parts of the floor. Have you thought about buying those rugs now and turning a blind eye toward the unfinished edges for a while? It seems a waste to buy a floating floor that will all be discarded in the foreseeable future.

Dogs or carpet, 2 options. YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH!!!!!!! DOGS AND CARPET DO NOT MIX!!!!! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE 80S FLOORING TRENDS. STOP IT. ALL THAT CARPET CLEANING YES YOU'LL HAVE TO CUZ THE DOGS WILL ROT YOUR WOOD FLOORING UNTIL IT CAVES IN. THAT MEANS NO. MORE. HOUSE FOR YOU .......

Think I'm kidding? Well guess what, if ur floor caves in. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN SOLELY! And by the way, don't expect you rich acquaintance, people who were doctors and lawyers in the 80 and 90ies who literally covered everything except kitchen and bathroom in friggin damn CARPET!!!!!!

I hope the original owners of the victim houses send vibes you way!!!!!!!!! If you insist on carpet, a COMMERCIAL HEAVY DUTY type vacuum cleaner is a must.

***original owners pass away in the fall of 1980***

Newbies move in.

May,1981 original hardwood flooring covered in brown carpet. But going back to the fall 1980, all hardwood and kitchen and bathroom tile work which includes flooring, circa 1950s

Think about it. If you're the sole survivor that faces forced relocation out of that mid century thing, run away to a motel in Nevada and change your identity with the appropriate state DMV.

steven, wth dude? take your rant elsewhere.

Beth h Same to you

Wth do some profiles have "PRO"badge below the profile?