My house is in disarray...but it's good

[DoYouKubuntu]

I have a live-in helper plus her boyfriend. I've been thinking about removing the carpet throughout the house and fixing up the wood floor underneath...and it's been YEARS since I first thought about it.

I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, even running it by my daughter (she loved the idea).

So out of the blue one day my helper asked if I'd ever thought about tearing out the carpet! Well, one thing led to another and right now about half the carpet is gone. My helper and her boyfriend are working on it as time allows.

The wood looks GREAT! My family has owned this house since 1971, and it's definitely been carpeted all that time; the house was built in 1946, and I have no idea how long the wood floor was used before carpet was installed. We had assumed we'd need to sand the wood before doing anything else, but it looks so good we're going to skip that step.

My furniture is mahogany and cherry, with a few distressed white pieces here and there. So far the furniture looks great against the wood floor!

Who knew when I needed a live-in helper post-hospitalization that she'd turn out to be a DIY person--and good at it?! This is really exciting because I've strongly disliked carpet for a long time, and now we're going to have the flooring this house was intended to have. I can't wait for it to be done.

[GreyGeek]

And as a bonus your 2x4'rs are probably truly 2"X4", and your 3/4ths inch flooring is just that.

[oshunluvr]

My SoCal (Long Beach) house was built in 1911 with 2x3s! But, they were actually 2x3 - vs. 1.75x3.75 that are "modern" 2x4s AND since they were old OLD growth pine they were hard as nails. I had to pre-drill before I could even drive a 16 penny nail into one.

Just guessing, but if you take a 100 year old 2x3 and put lathe and plaster on it, you're waaayyy stronger than a "modern" 2x4 with drywall. Jus' sayin'

[GreyGeek]

When I was teaching at Clarks, NE, I lived 5 miles outside that village in the oldest house in the county. It was built in 1887 using Cotton Wood! When I converted from propane to a Warm Morning Wood burning stove I had to create ducts in the ceiling of the living room leading to the 2nd floor bedrooms. I used my finger to saw through the cottonwood "2X4"'s. The flow of air was up through the ducts into the upstairs bedrooms, down the steps into the kitchen, over to the dining area, and through the doorway into the living room. I'd load the stove up with 4 good logs, 6" dia X 18" long, and the butterfly valve on the stove would regulate the house temp to 70F upstairs and down. It has a circulation fan. When I got up in the morning, in the middle of January, the butterfly valve would be wide open and the temp was usually still around 65F and a nice bed of red embers was glowing in the firebox of the stove. Shake the ashes, put in fresh logs, and within 15 minutes the house was a cozy 70F again.
Wood heats you twice: once when you cut it and again when you burn it!

[DoYouKubuntu]

Great stories! Thanks for sharing.

Yes, I believe they're 2x4s. They're so pretty, it's kind of sad thinking how they were buried under carpet for decades!

[Qqmike]

You want to check with your own local oak-flooring experts there. I'll just mention that my guys here recommended Bruce Deep Cleaner for wood floors and paneling. Easy to use, but hard work on hands and knees. You can do a small section at a time. It cleans the dirt off the floor, but it also imparts a "renewed" look to the wood.

[dibl]

Wood heats you twice: once when you cut it and again when you burn it!

Hahahaha -- well said, GG! If I live to be 200, I will never forget the 10-degree F January day in the mid-1970s that I drove my 1975 Dodge D100 pickup truck across a frozen field to a woodlot where I had permission to cut up a fallen tree and take the pieces home for firewood. I started out with a winter coat, hat, and heavy gloves. Worked the chainsaw for 20 minutes and took off the hat and coat. Cut for another 20 minutes and off came the gloves and flannel shirt. Finished the job in my T-shirt undershirt, with steam rolling off my arms and torso (and head, probably). Started throwing the chunks into the truck bed, and in a short while needed my winter garb back on.

Kinda glad for my all-electric house, at this point in life.

[woodsmoke]

yeppers
good stories!
My grand dad on distaff side and his wife acutally built their house back in 1918, using a "whiskey stick" for a level! He was an interior decorator from Chicago who actually did "gold beating", not making it but applying it to interior decoration, and did the "jewel of the ..." which had probably two thousand square feet applied and he and the other guy were paid... a nickle ( $00.05) back in the late 1916. I still have his union book, a little red thing about the size of what we would now call an address book, union stickers and all.

My other grandfather and my mother build the house that I grew up in and when we sold it after my mother died it was "as is" and still is "as is" except that the exterior "asbestos siding" was covered with aluminum siding by the new owners and the rooms are still the original "board and batten white pine" wall boards with different stains in each room.

So yeah... the old stuff is still old because it is still HERE!!

woodsmok