New Floors!

It all began looking like this:

Notice the lack of flooring, and if you look closely, you can see an area in the hall that had been patched.

Does anyone remember those old floor registers?  The big square ones that came straight up from the furnace in the basement?

The hallway patch is where one of those were.

In these 1950's homes, this patch job is quite common.  So common in fact that several of our friends in the area have this same patch in their homes - covered by a rug.

Although we did receive the rug suggestion, our thoughts were to finish it as if it were never there to begin with.

So up came the patch, down went the subfloor, and out came the saw.

Meticulously, carefully, and very very strategically, the old boards were cut and pulled up.

Now add a little bit of these beauties.

And this is what you get. 

And if you have awesome, spectacular friends, you get this.


Big Blue is the floor nailer Melanie's holding.  He's loud. 


But Melanie is tough. 











I love Melanie's wonderful flooring skills.  She is a beast when it comes to floors.  Don't let that sweet voice fool you.

She kicks serious flooring butt.

Just sayin'.  I told ya so.


Paul's great too - just in case you thought I was leaving him out.  He'll take your ideas and claim them as his own, but he works hard. ..... just kiddin Paul. 

but seriously this man has been John's right hand man on this house.

He's out helping John right now with the deck as we speak.  And even brought John lunch.

That's brotherly love there.  Food.

After all that, this is the beautiful Kitchen floor you get.  It's not stained yet which is even more amazing.

Although the lighting is poor (working at night will do that, especially if you have no flash on your camera phone), you can see the phenomenal job Paul and Melanie did on placing the floors. 

The coloring is perfect to blend into the existing hardwoods, which has all to do with the pieces you choose.

 
These are the existing floorboards here.  Between these two pictures you can see how the previous floors have the different grains mixed in occasionally.

This picture is of the unfinished Living Room area.



Then you add a little stain...

And get this!

Look at the awesome job here.

No other word to describe this.

Awesome.

I could stare at this picture for days.










 This is the Living Room again, after stain.

And after adding a coat of polyurethane, this is the same shot.

The point where the two floors meet is along this wall.

Can you see a difference?

I can't. 

And I put them in.

And stained them. Myself.  By hand. 

Sorry for the boasting.  I'm just very proud of myself right now.  My hard work is paying off through the overly joyous feeling I get looking at this picture.



A HUGE Thank You goes out to Emily, Josh, and Traci, who also took a Thursday night and did miraculous things to my house.  These three are my personal heroes right now.  They came over and unknowingly subjected themselves to vacuuming, wiping, and tacking my floors on hands and knees to get up accumulated dust from painting, working, and days of general house repairs.  Without them I'm sure I would still be wiping up dust, sleep deprived, and emotionally drained.  You guys are wonderful!