When we moved into the victorian, I was seven months pregnant. I knew when we got into the home I would be nesting. Id want to get things done as much as possible, before Cash our newest baby boy would make it into our lives.
We decided to make sure we finished his room first. This was no easy task. The room Itself had pink carpet, pink woodwork, a dropped ceiling, and horrid tiles glued to the wood flooring. (Which of course we discovered after purchasing the home.)
The day we really decided to go for working in the baby room totally sucked. We ripped off and scraped all the wallpaper, which was a absolute nightmare. This room was so hard to get the paper off. Especially being 7 months pregnant. I remember the first time I stood on a ladder to do something after I gave birth and couldn’t believe how much easier it was to balance.
So even though the wallpaper was a nightmare to get off, we had no idea what we were in for with these floors. Under that pink, highly stained carpet, was linoleum tiles glued to the wood floor. At first we didn’t think this was the biggest deal in the world. Our floor guy Chad was still working downstairs and he suggested we use some sort of machine thingy from Home Depot to pop the tiles off. Normally this probably would have worked great, but since the floors are a soft wood, we couldn’t use anything aggressive to get these tiles off. All that did was make the pine floors split horribly.
The popping off of the tiles wasn’t that difficult. Travis used a large scraper to get them off. However, what laid underneath was the hard part. After the tile was popped off, a felt-like paper backing was left behind. After the paper backing came some extremely nasty thick black glue. What a nightmare. We made many attempts that day to get that crap off the floor. NOTHING worked.
We went to sleep that night very discouraged. We started pricing out the cost to have the floors replaced (which would be a billion dollars) and were also considering carpet. Let me just let you know how much we hate carpet. It may work for other people, but for Travis and I, we can’t stand it. It’s just not our thing.
The next day, Travis woke up saying he had an idea. He had a solution to get the black grime off the floors. He literally jumped out of bed saying he had an idea. A small handheld planer was his solution. He decided to put it at a very low setting to see if he could get that to scrape the black glue off. Atfirst it didn’t work because the black stuff just caused the planer to “gum” up. Travis quickly came up with the solution to use Extra virgin olive oil to clean it off often. The water parted and the skies cleared. Thankfully, it worked. There was hope again. Hope in restoring these beautiful 1890’s wide plank floors. They deserved to be able to breathe again! They had been covered with so many layers, I’m sure that wood was just dying to breathe.
you can see the tiles still , and that greenish layer you see is the felt, and then the planed floor on the right side of the photo
Travis scraping tiles off
first planed section
After many many long hours in this room, we were able to plane the entire floor. This kept cost down a little bit for us for having to pay for Chad and his floor restoration expertise. We’re always looking to help cut on cost if possible. We found a few areas that needed patches, which thankfully we have a whole attic of beautiful raw pine that has never been touched. Thank goodness. We also discovered some interesting grooves in the floors, most likely from a terminate or something like that. This bug that created these burrows did his work long before these tiles were ever laid. We know that the house was in terrible condition when the previous owners purchased the house. So I’m sure there were many small creatures crawling this house. Maybe even large. (we’ve found many acorns in the walls here.)
The difference in the floor is incredible. You’d never know that these floors were buried under this nastiness. It is incredible that something this layered with filth could be saved. There’s so many people in the world quick to rip out their floors. Believe me, for a short time frame I had all those thoughts. It’s against everything i’m for however. I think with some serious dedication and determination, any thing can be saved in historic situations. It’s just a matter of how much work your willing to stick into it.
That woodgrain makes my heart flutter
woodgrain heart palpitations
It was so hard to wait for Chad to work on these floors and wait to see the progress. In the downstairs, we were able to peak at his work as he went. Of course this made us super excited. Two staircases really comes in handy. I’m not sure why modern day houses would have ever given that feature up now that I have it. From the first floor, we could go up the butlers staircase and come down the main staircase and see the foyer, parlor and if you leaned far enough the living room. But upstairs, all you could do was go up the staircases and peak around the corner, down the hallway. Whatever stairs you were looking from didn’t make a difference. OH the suspense. I never in a million years would have thought they’d turn out this amazing. This was a way bigger transformation compared to the first floor. The first floor didn’t have black tar goop stuck to them.
Sraping the floors was only the beginning of floor scraping. We still had four other bedrooms, and a 30 some foot hallway to scrape. I remember when we completed this room, I wanted to hang out in there all the time. It was so clean, and so refreshed. I daydreamed of design and I was always trying to imagine what my baby would be like once he was in our lives, in his crib, and in this room. This house speaks to my heart and soul, and bringing these floors to life again makes me feel like we gave her a little fresh air.
