It was the pine under the dining room floor that clinched it.
I'm ripping up the floors.
There are many of you gasping at this moment, many of you saying YES!! and many more of you wondering what you should have for dinner tonight.
I have 4 rooms on my lower floor and 4 different floorings. That's a lot of different floors. It bugged me. Not a huge amount, I mean I didn't wake up in the middle of the night, throw myself on the ground and start banging my fists and crying, but it did bug me a little bit.
What bothered me the most were the pine floors in my foyer which the previous owners put down for no apparent reason other than to match the adjacent living room floors. They covered up strip maple with new, knotty pine from Home Depot thinking it would blend seamlessly with the 180 year old pine floors in the living room. It did not.
It looked like new Home Depot knotty pine floor beside 180 year old pine floors. So when I pulled up the knotty pine and found a beautiful floor underneath I was thrilled. That elation lasted for about 30 seconds before my curious started jiggling.
I wonder what's under the maple? Turns out it was same 180 year old pine that's in the living room. Now I was in trouble. But the maple looked good running into the oak of the dining room. They didn't match per say but at least all the boards were going in the same direction.
Then I found pine under my dining room floor and all hell broke loose in my brain with eyeballs flying and facial twitches twisting. After a few days of thinking about it I came to grips with who I am.
I'm Karen. And I'm curious. And I'd never be able to truly rest until I knew what the floors were like when they were brought down to their original glory. Or grossness. Regardless, I was going to have to find out.
Also I was forced into making a decision when my floor guy called me and said he'd be at my house to start work in a week. 12 hours after he called, my living room and foyer looked like this.
Which means my dining room became this ...
Everything from the two front rooms got moved into my dining room so I could rip up the foyer floors, scrape the filler out of the living room floor cracks and have everything ready for the sander on Monday.
The floor sanders will have to do the job in 2 stages. The first two rooms, and then the dining room because there is literally nowhere to put all the furniture to do all the rooms at once. The crack filler I'm talking about is the mixture of sawdust and glue that floor refinishers sometimes put in between large cracks in old floors. It makes everything uniform and eliminates cracks. However it also pops out in places after a season or two of contraction and expansion.
Over the years the half or even more of the crack filler will come out leaving the floors messy looking.
Without the filler the cracks are MUCH more noticeable, but also more authentic looking so I'm removing it all by hand and leaving the cracks as is once I redo the floors.
The original way of filling these cracks in floor boards was to push rope into them. When the floor contracts and expands, the rope contracts and expands with the floors. The point of the rope wasn't just aesthetics. In fact, it mostly wasn't aesthetics, it was to stop things from falling down cracks and to insulate any drafts from coming up.
Any of the filler that just pops out easily popped out itself years ago so the remaining stuff is hard to get out. I'm using whatever tools I need to get the job done. A carpet cutter, screwdrivers and in certain places my Dremel Multi-max.
For those of you who were worried about pine being too soft for flooring, it's what all of these heritage homes had. So if you love the original old features in this type of house (which I do) you embrace this pine. Also, old growth pine like the original flooring found in these houses is much harder than any pine you'd find nowadays partly because it was old slow growth pine and partly because of the age of it.
So there you have it. After weeks of thinking about it and quite frankly knowing I'd end up doing this in the end, I'm ripping my floors out. Actually, I already have. Sometimes you just need to let yourself slowly come to terms with things.
Like the fact that once I ripped up the maple floors I realized I'd need to make some repairs to the pine floor. Which meant I'd also have to rip up the pine.
K. Rip up the pine, source antique floor boards, re-support and repair the pine floors and build a new threshold from foyer to the living room. In two days.
In addition to ALL of that, and perhaps even worse - I have NO idea what I'm having for dinner.
Have a good weekend!
→Follow me on Instagram where I'll be posting more as I rip out my floors.←
Catherine Naulin
Oh Karen!
You are SO SO brave! I can't even face redoing our kitchen and dining room floors 'cause I'm flat out tired just thinking of the work before, during and after. I need a little of your energy. Can I have some PLEASE?
Bravo on your decision. It's going to look spectacular. Can't wait to see the results
As for filling crack between wood boards, I refinished a very old farm table this summer and left the cracks open. I now store a small paint brush in the drawer to get rid of stray bread crumbs. It works for me, and I love the look.
Bon courage!
Catherine
Mia
Don't you usually have a huge project going as you approach Thanksgiving in Canada? Well then, you were obligated to rip up the floors :)
Mary W
YEA!!!! As Lois Barron (1st comment) put it so well - you are a force of nature. I would have to add that the filler also keeps spiders from crawling up. Or in your case, centipedes or millipedes, or thousand legged whatevers.
Tessa Ryan-Lipp
If authenticity is your goal, maybe you should be looking into oakum to caulk your floors?
Karen
I am looking into rope as a matter of fact! ~ karen
Marion
You're absolutely amazing! I can't wait to see the final product, I know the floors will be lovely.
Jan in Waterdown
Getting the stuff out from between the cracks can be very satisfying.... kinda like popping pimples 😏
CONNIE VOLKMAN
You are a brave and energetic woman. It will be beautiful.
danni
yeah, I saw that decision coming a mile away... good for you, love the look of old wood, and the marks don't bother me, just makes me wonder who walked these floors so long ago....
I just cant figure where you find the time with harvesting and canning and freezing still going on!
Karen
The issue is more of getting my actual blog work done, lol. Oh. And I just realized a couple of days ago that Thanksgiving is in one week here in Canada. Which I'm supposed to hold at my house. ~ karen!
Suzanne LH
“Let” someone else do it this year?
Shawna
thank you for doing this now. We are *just* (3 days) finished patching our strip oak floors, weaving in repairs and extended the old wood into the kitchen. now there are only 2 types of flooring on the main floor. Initially everyone was skeptical - why go to all that work to install old flooring?
The verdict: I LOVE IT. LOVE IT.
My prediction: you will LOVE IT!!!
good luck with all your work!
linda in Illinois
you will love the floors.. I know you will be much happier. Document everything you find, it is such a great adventure, like a time capsule. I'm very excited.
Jeanne
I was certain you would do this. I know my Karen well. If my knees would let me I would come help you. I want to defect from US anyway. It's gonna be great to watch the process of your floors; not so much government in the US.
Cussot
I'm with you on this. If it weren't for my husband, I would have dug down to my original floors long ago. Must be an archeological instinct or something.
Bryonna
Your house is so lucky to have you as her owner. She continues to grow more and more beautiful thanks to your vision and very very hard work
Liza
So glad you made this decision - now I can't wait to see the finished floors!
Jan in Waterdown
Getting stuff out from between the cracks can be very satisfying.... kinda like popping pimples.
Sandra Brooks
From the very first post I thought... this floor is getting ripped up. Knowing you, and knowing that you know that original pine floor was lurking under there... it was inevitable. And the right thing to do. Because you would’ve always wondered and, well, your blog is NOT called The Art of Wondering About Stuff now is it?!
Stephanie
No big surprise here! LOL!
I would do the exact same thing and not worry about eating for the next 2 days!
Congratulations on embracing your true nature!
Bunguin
Too bad you live in Canada and I in US (Massachusettes) - I have a pile of old, old pine I salvaged from a room in my previous house and I couldn't bear to throw it away. I still have it in the garage of my new(er) house.
Noreen McKechnie
I’m the 100+year old house I grew up in the dining room floor had some kind of polished hardwood floor around the edge of the room and untreated wide pine under where the rug lay!
Jody
How are your knees and back? Have you been able to stand erect since you started your
Big Autumn Project?