Uncovering the Hardwoods

Just peeking out of my unmotivated state (have you noticed?) to share a funny little story.

I know I've mentioned this before but sometimes I get in a manic I-need-to-change-something-NOW mood.  You'd think that I'd learn to not give in to these crazy episodes.  There's lots that I could do...like finish peeling the wallpaper border off our bedroom wall (which is a result of another day where I let the crazy get the best of me), paint the trim, touch up paint in the living room where we removed the baseboard heaters or deep clean the house, but none of those would satiate me.  I.wanted.those.floors. I've dreamed of wood floors since the day we moved in and when I discovered them a couple months back it's been itching at me to uncover them.

So the other day, during a very rare two kid nap, I set out to pull up the carpet. I moved the furniture out of the way as best I could, unassembled the sofa (the chaise detaches and the pull out bed comes out) and started pulling it up - moving things around as I went.  It was exhausting.  But I was fueled by grand thoughts of refinishing this beat up flooring to a more beautiful state and had visions of Nicole Curtis egging me on.

I rolled up the carpet (very unprofessionally) and pushed it out the front door.  Then I grabbed the pliers and small pry bar to pull up the tack strips, nails and staples that were left behind.

After I finished the section behind the sofa the motivation and joy of it all started to wear off and I was staring straight into my reality.  I didn't like what I saw.  My mind just kept repeating "This is bad.  This is really bad."

This floor has seen years of abuse (over 100, I'm told.)  That's not a bunch of dirt and dust on the floor (although there is that) but the floor's glorious uneven finish.  It's been stained, painted, worn down and in a few places it's rotting and brittle.  In it's current state it is less than charming and it's not in the cards to refinish it anytime soon.  I sure didn't feel comfortable with the thought of walking around on it with my bare feet, let alone with my kids crawling around on it. (Did I mention the little one is already crawling?)  You'd think these things would have crossed my mind before I got to work...but no.

I stood there staring, sweating and panicked.  I grabbed the broom and dustpan, dumped the debris in the garbage, vacuumed the floor and pulled the carpet back into the house and started rolling it back into place.  Luckily most of the room still had the tack strips attached so it was just a matter of matching it up and stretching it out.  Where we were set on pulling up all the carpet and refinishing these floors I'm now a little overwhelmed by the process and am leaning towards re-carpeting - especially if we were to put down a thick padding and a soft and beautiful loop style carpet from Mohawk Flooring, like the Ensemble.  Of course we'll be living with the current carpet for awhile - oh did I mention the padding didn't survive so now we have thin berber carpet sitting directly onto these old hardwoods.  It is amazing.

That'll teach me.