Floors

Because I am apparently seeking to make my life difficult, I started working on my floors right after I was done with the door locks. If I had planned ahead, I wouldn't even have bothered to unpack the living room, because I enjoyed it for precisely one week before I moved all the furniture back out. (Extra thanks to N who moved the couch in, then came back a week later to help me move it out.) I had pulled up a tiny piece of carpet the very first day I moved into the house, and I could see there was hardwood under the carpet. Since that day, I had been burning with curiosity about the state of said wood floors. So here's what I found...

The living room, half uncovered. There are nail and staples doles, and for some reason holes were drilled near every wall so that half a dozen cables (i.e. cable TV cables) could be pulled through. I can't figure out that out - did the previous owners have six televisions in every room?

One downstairs bedroom: the foam under the carpet pad adhered to the floor and has to be laboriously pulled off in tiny strips using my fingernails to scrape.

But the floors are in pretty decent shape! The good news: they didn't glue the carpet pad down, so I've only pulled up (many, many) nails and staples. The finish is worn off in high-traffic areas, but not so much that the wood has been worn away. The not great news: the finish is worn off and there are a few water stains.

I've spent all week debating whether I should sand down and refinish. This is a big task, would require me to move me and the animals out of the house for a week, and would be pretty physically demanding. It's the thing that most people do, though, because they want a house that looks like new and they want polyurethane floors that require no care.

After much thought, I'm inclined not to refinish but to just wax. You can only refinish a floor a limited number of times before you sand away all the wood, so it shouldn't be done too rashly. I also like a floor that looks lived in - it's homey, and I don't worry about having a dog with nails or women with high heels walking around on it. After all, if it has a some dings, what are a few more? This weekend I'm going to try to figure out what finish is on the floor, and test a bit of wax on it. If that's the way I go, I'll still have to spend a number of hours buffing the floor, but I may be sitting on my couch by Thanksgiving. That would be an awesome thing; you really miss furniture when you don't have it anymore.