February 2005
At the end of January, Jay and Andy took out the black
carpet that covered the living room floor when we bought the house in
2000. The black made the room really dark, and we'd talked for a long time
about getting back to the hardwood floor.
MORE - March
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We discovered that our living room had at one time actually been two
rooms; there was evidence in the flooring of a former wall between those
two rooms. We debated whether to just carpet over the floor again, but
decided that ultimately we wanted hard wood and that the oak was too
beautiful to cover up. Jay took out several boards and bought new oak;
it's a big job because someone had nailed the oak down before carpeting
with over 750 flathead nails that Jay had to pry out.
If you click on the first and third photos to enlarge the photo, I've
added red arrows pointing to the square nails that we found underneath the
floorboards - Jay looked them up on the Internet and found that square
nails were made & used between 1810-1880, so the house is even older than
we thought. The last photo was taken with all of the furniture removed;
next we'll paint the walls, then sand and varnish the floor. |