From the beginning of this remodel project, one of our goals was to save the original hardwood floors in two rooms of the house. At one point, we weren’t quite sure we were going to make it, but we did salvage those floors!
We pulled up the carpet and refinished the hardwood floor in the living room not too long after we bought the house. (And by “we” here, I totally mean Hubby Doc. I had no part of that project.) This floor was actually in pretty decent shape when we first emptied the house to start the remodel extravaganza.
But, it has had a lot of wear and tear during the process, and we knew it was going to need to be refinished again. We also took out the fireplace and moved that wall about 4 feet back, so we also had some piecing in to do. There was one bedroom with original hardwood that we took out (the room is gone), and we were able to use the hardwood from the other bedroom to piece in the new part of the floor. Then it got sanded… and sanded… and sanded again – I think Hubby Doc went through 5 different grit levels of sand paper.
And then I refinished it with clear semi-gloss polyurethane. Lots and lots of polyurethane. Here it is after two coats…
We sanded between each coat of polyurethane, and finished with three coats of the smelly stuff. The last coat went on Saturday afternoon, and here is the floor on Sunday afternoon.
This room used to be our master bedroom. (Now it’s the smallest bedroom in the house!) This is also original hardwood floor to the house, but all we did in this room was pull up the carpet, so the floor was in need of a refinish anyway.
Here we are after sanding… we were surprised that this floor was quite a bit darker, and had more grain to it than the floor in the living room.
Two coats of clear semi-gloss polyurethane later and we were getting close…
And the finished project as of this afternoon…
We’re pretty proud of these floors, and really excited that we were able to salvage this original feature of our house.
(Did I mention that I have giant bruises on my knees from kneeling on these floors all week long? I think it’s worth it.)
The floors turned out beautiful!!!!!
Thanks, we’re really proud of them!
This is what I hope to do to our old wood floors IF all the “stuff” we have split on the carpet in the last 11 years hasn’t gone through the pad and totally destroyed it. Sooooo tired of the carpet! Sigh…..
Our hardwood floors were actually pretty forgiving. You might be surprised what you can “sand out” when you get to refinishing. We didn’t put a stitch of carpet in our new house!