Renewing Our Hardwood Floor

So we started with pulling up the carpet in our hallway and family room. What we first saw was that half the floor in the family room had linoleum glue stuck to it, and the other half was painted white. We also saw that two sections had been removed and replaced with plywood. Yikes! We had our work cut out for us alright. The amazing thing was that it only took us about a week to finish the project. My husband had some vacation time, so we used that time to finish our job.

The first thing we did was remove all the carpet staples. Why the former tenant didn't use tacks I have no idea. Remember, we had carpeting throughout the house when we bought it. The next thing we had to do was remove the linoleum glue. We tried using a sander, but that used way to much sandpaper. We had no choice but to use a scraper and some razor blades to remove it.

The next step was removing the white paint on the other half. That wasn't so bad, we just rented a sander and sanded it off. Once we removed the white paint, the next step was sanding the whole thing. We ended up renting the sander for the weekend. About 6 hours of work a day later, the entire floor was sanded. The final step was buying and applying stain and sealer. Two coats of stain and two coats of sealer later, we had beautiful, red oak, hardwood floors. We couldn't really do anything about the two sections that had plywood, so we just bought two rugs and covered them up. The results were amazing! Although, it only took us a week, it was by no means easy. If you have the money, and you're not as stubborn as my husband, you might want to hire someone to do it for you. On the other hand, if you want something you can be proud of at the end, you might want to do what we did.

Hardwood floors were standard in houses built in the 1950's. Just about every house at the time had them. Hardwood floors are very sturdy and wonderful to look at. Any house with a decent hardwood floor in it has extra value.

Nowadays, you can buy Laminates that look like actual hardwood flooring, but if you ask me, there's no substitute for a real hardwood floor. I look at mine every day and marvel at it's beauty, and what we made out of the mess we started with.