Restoration Sans Destruction: Hardwood

And this is my first post here on our new(ish) blog! Allow me to introduce myself. I am the Andrew occasionally spoken of in Gina's entries and half of the Odd Fellows Wrecking Crew (More than half, by weight).

Here at the Odd Fellows House we have a number of projects underway, as our editor in chief Gina has been documenting :-). The house has a number of original features that we are excited to restore and preserve. Perhaps chief among them is the newly unveiled hardwood flooring in our parlor and, if our luck holds, in the master bedroom. The wood appears to be either pine or douglas fir. Here is what we are working with:

While at first blush it may be a little more "blech!" than "yay!", we are quite happy to find the hardwood in such great shape. The wood would have been hand nailed down in 1885, right around the time President Chester Arthur dedicated the Washington Monument; during a period where Indian raids were still an issue in the Northwest Territories. Since that time there have been a lot of plagues unleashed on the hardwood floors of America. Who among us can forget the linoleum fad of the 1950s? What house wasn't touched by the vinyl sheet flooring of the mid-1970s? It has been a dangerous world for floors these past 127 years and we are most pleased at least one of our's made it through (relatively) unscathed. 

While we are overjoyed to not be using a heat gun to loosen adhesive and scrape up asbestos-laden tile in our parlor, we are faced with a dilemma. The floor is certainly not perfect, and it definitely needs some sprucing up (pardon the pun). The last thing we want to do is sand away too much of our wear layer or our face nailed nail heads, and wind up with a floor in need of replacing. The restoration process here will be an exercise in restraint and extremely careful sanding. 

Hopefully, if I get the thumbs up from Gina, we can repair the scuffs and scrapes and avoid having to sand too much!

Tearing up the carpet

While sitting on our porch this morning, our neighbor, the former owner of the Odd Fellows House, mentioned in passing that he had the hardwood floor refinished before putting down the brown industrial carpet that afflicts most of our living areas. We knew there was hardwood underneath but we didn't know what condition it was in. 

We ran inside and started cutting the carpet up. Since this was on a whim, we didn't take out any of the furniture, instead we cut around the furniture, lifted it up and pulled out the pieces of carpet and padding. 

 

It was a bit tight with all of the furniture so we ended up blocking the front door and the door into the kitchen with items. That led to me climbing out of our front window and having Andrew pass me the carpet pieces through the window. Totally normal.

After that, we pried up the carpet tacks and pulled up the staples.

From what we can tell, this is the original hardwood from 1885. It looks like Douglas Fir or pine, and it is laid in flat planks that are top nailed. You can see it from the basement looking up through the floor joists, so there is no subfloor, which is typical of houses built in the late 19th century. The floors have instantly made our house feel more authentic. And all it took was an afternoon, a couple of razor blades and a really bad 90's playlist. 

Painting Our French Door

We're loving the new french door between the living room and kitchen but we're torn about what color to paint it: white to match the trim or a complementary color?

The living room is painted a pale yellow by the previous owners and we have come to love the color as it is both warm and bright without being too in-your-face.  We plan on installing wainscoting in a darker yellow and painting the ceiling an even paler yellow. Something like this:

Moon Mist for the ceiling, Pale Daffodil for the walls and Bicycle Yellow for the wainscoting. Then we could paint the door either Moon Mist or Bicycle Yellow. 

What do you think? Can you picture me sashaying through a white or yellow door?

 

Video Tour of House

Andrew and I jumped right into working on the house, so I don't have many "before" pictures, but I made this quick video a couple of days before we moved in. It is just of the first floor and the house is full of the seller's stuff (they used it as an office), but I think it gives a good idea of our starting point.

Why was the house tour interrupted? Because the 4 1/2 foot snake I saw in the backyard was climbing one of our trees and Andrew thought I'd find this cool.

Sssssssso cool.