Woot, the floors are done...but not done.

The floors are doooooooone!!!

OK, by done I mean completely unfinished, but every bit of our work concerning the floors is over.  It only took three weeks (sigh) but Matt did an outstanding job and they are installed, swept, and ready to be sanded and finished!  Woot! 

The main reasons it took so long is 1. Matt is a perfectionist when it comes to his own work, B. Matt has never done this before, and III. We (Matt) only worked on Saturdays and evenings.  Not too bad considering this past week Fall activities started up again and we were busy almost every night.

 

So, Saturday Matt put in a full day starting about 10:00 a.m. and finishing a little before 7:00 p.m.

Of course, it's good if you have a little helper. 

Addie would work beside Matt with blocks and paper she pretended were her hammer and wood. She even had a children's Bible out and would "read" Matt the instructions for what to do next.

 

And speaking of helpers, I need to also give a shout out to our friend Jim Koch!

Jim is a servant and loves to work with his hands.  He showed up announced last Saturday and helped Matt with the floors for a few hours.

 

Here you can also see the floor nailer in action.

 

 

 

 Ironically it saved us a ton of money to buy one ourselves.  I would have to fact check with Matt, but it seems the rental fee was about half the price of buying a new one and you only got the nailer for a week.  We considered this option going into the project when we were naive and thought maybe this was a week long project.  So...we just would've been stressed out and frustrated about the situation, and we're glad we have one now.  Matt hasn't specifically mentioned putting up wood floors in the upstairs, but I'm sure he's thinking about it! 



So, (drum roll) here is the living room:

(This was obviously taken before we removed a couple of pieces of furniture but you get the idea.)

 



 

And the dining room:

 

 (in case you don't have litte girls at home, these two rooms are now basically dance halls)

 

I should have taken a shot of the rooms with the 1980's carpet for comparison sake, but I do think I have one in the archives and will have to find it for a true before and after shot when everything is all said and done.

 

Like I said, now they are ready to be sanded and stained.   We are going with an oil finish and opposed to a regular polyurethane finish.  This basically means the final look will be matte and not shiny and it will hide dents and scratches all lot better as time goes on.  The negative is that you have to put a special treatment over it once a month.  However, it only needs to go in the higher traffic areas (no moving furniture), and it dries within a few minutes.  So, really it shouldn't be any different than cleaning your floor.  We also checked the price of the solution, and it was very reasonable. 

 

That being said, here are the color choices we narrowed it down to:

Top left is antique, bottom left is walnut, and the right side is 75% walnut 25% black.

 

 

 It's hard to get a true to life color in a photo, but we definitely want something warm and yummy (which made me just think of a cinnamon roll...they're warm and yummy).  So, although in the photos I like the 25% black option, in real life it was a little too black so we are going with walnut.

 

Finally, here is our foyer.

 



We didn't do anything in here except the prep work of removing furniture and trim work, but they will also be sanding and staining these as well.  We debated forever about whether or not we should rip it all out, but it is in such good shape it seemed like a waste.  As a side note, it also would have been a lot of work since it is all nailed and glued down.

So, the color of this will be changing so all the wood flooring is uniform in color.  That was important to me since this floor has a lot of pattern going on and I didn't want wonky floors happening all over.  The final color won't be drastically different, but similar to the door that you see in the back of the photo.

 That's all!

We will have a crazy week of just staying out of our house for the next three to four days.  But, hey if I have to eat out a lot and hang out with friends for the sake of a house project I'm willing to do what I gotta do!