This weekend Paul and I turned our attention for the first time to the main living space on the 1st floor. We decided we wanted to see what was under the carpet in the dining room so we pulled it back and were surprised not to find the same oak floors that were in the adjoining room... instead we found a layer of plywood. Hmmm.
Well, we thought... I wonder what's underneath that? Before we knew it we had uncovered the carpet, carpet padding, 5 layers of linoleum, several layers of newspapers, 2 layers of plywood and finally... the original wide plank antique pine floors! Needless to say it was quite a weekend.
Paul points to several layers of lino and underneath old newspapers. See the beautiful old floors uncovered behind him.
Newspapers uncovered beneath layers of linoleum... dating back to June of 1942.
Some mementos of our laborious weekend... several recovered samples of floors from days gone by.
It ended up taking us all day Saturday and Sunday to remove all of the old flooring from just one room, but in doing so we recovered almost two full inches of height to the room! With ceilings as low as ours, adding two inches makes a big difference.
We had planned to install new teak hardwood floors throughout the first floor, but now we're leaning towards refinishing the old pine floors instead. There will no doubt need to be lots of patchwork done before all is said and done. But what a reward to be able to enjoy the same beautiful floors that the original homeowners back in the 1800's.
That's a lot of layers! I love the linoleum on the left!
Posted by: Patricia W. | February 26, 2007 at 05:54 AM
Hooray for hard work and a pine floor reward!
Posted by: Victoria | February 26, 2007 at 08:25 AM
wow, that's some collection of flooring you have there.
you didn't want to salvage the green stone looking stuff?!
Posted by: felicia | April 28, 2007 at 05:35 PM