How We Renovated Our Hardwood Floors
Our house is about 100 years old.
It was built in the 1920s all of the character it wears, made us fall in love with it, even though we had yet to see it. You see, we were living in Minnesota when we saw this house pop up on the hot market in 2017. Moving to Michigan wasn’t proving to be easy, considering we wouldn’t be able to get to Michigan quick enough, before a house would sell.
When Dan saw our house pop up on the market at 6am, he immediately called our realtor and said, “I want to put in an offer”. I was still in bed and had no clue this house even existed. Call us crazy, but that is just us. That whole idea of being of one mind in marriage? Yeah, we both knew what each other wanted, even in a home. Now, does it always work like that? Absolutely not. We are imperfect, and therefore so is our marriage. But one thing we did agree on, was the type of home we wanted!
After looking through a set of pictures on a real estate website, I knew it would be the perfect fit. But would God think the same thing? What seemed like years, only a few days later, we learned the owners had accepted our offer. And we had yet to see it. Thankfully we had my brother-in-law and a friend of his walk through it for us, but we NEVER imagined buying a house without seeing it first. But in the end, it was THE best purchase we could’ve ever made.
We have always wanted a home with character and a home that would take a little fixing up. In this home, the bones are absolutely amazing! There are so many stories to be told about this house, and something as simple as the floors, tell a story.
Starting small and ending big
One of the reno projects started as wanting to replace the carpet in our bedroom and re-do our bedroom closet, then became a whole renovation of our hardwood floors. We quickly learned that carpet isn’t cheap. Nor is the labor to put it in. You see, our bedroom is large. Being an old house, it used to be two rooms, but was made into one. After doing some pricing, we realized we could re-do the hardwood floors of the whole house ourselves, for cheaper than if we put new carpet in just our room. The thing is…
Years ago, when our popcorn ceiling was put in, the hardwood floors were never covered. We are assuming it was thought they would eventually be covered with carpet anyways, so why cover them? Well, we are those people who wanted to replace the carpet, but then realized the gem of a floor that was underneath. But when we removed ALL of the carpet, this is what we found…
As you can see, it was a bit more work than we anticipated.
Removing the umpteen nails and staples from the padding:
So after we pulled up all of the carpet, we discovered that since indeed our bedroom used to be 2 rooms, there was plywood laid down where the wall used to be. That meant there was not real hardwood in that spot. Thus began the work of getting the floor ready to be sanded, stained, and finished. And let me tell you, it was a PROCESS. We were told by many that it is a LOT of work, but it will be worth it in the end. Welp, they were right!
Not only did we have to replace the plywood where the wall was in our bedroom, but in our dining room, a large square was filled in with plywood planks. We knew that to be true because there was a simple rug over it. We learned that back in the day, to save money, instead of finishing the whole floor, homeowners would put real wood around the perimeter, a type of cheaper wood in the middle, and then carpet over that. So that meant we had to rip up all of the old wood. And of course, some plank boards were broken below, so Dan had to replace those as well. Usually when you do a big house project, you always find a few more issues, right? Especially when the house is 100 years old!
Then started the process of putting in the new wood. Let me tell you, I am married to handyman Dan! If he doesn’t know how to do something, he will watch YouTube video after video, to learn how. The weekend we were going to start this project, it ended up being spent trying to fix our furnace that no longer was working. Talk about the possibility of a big expense, after you have torn up your floors! But handyman Dan was able to diagnose and fix it for the meantime, as he spent hours and hours eliminating problems that it could be. And in the end? A WORKING FURNACE! Seriously, so incredibly thankful for this hardworking man of mine!
We have learned in life that doing a project well, has everything to do with having the right tools. Thank you to friends and family who let us borrow tools to help us make this project happen!
His hard work paid off! He did an INCREDIBLE job installing it!
Now it was time to sand it all down…
Sanding and more sanding…
Remember how this project also started with a reno of the closet? Here it is freshly painted with the floors sanded…
And remember where the wall was in our bedroom? Dan patched it all in…something I could never do, let’s be real here…
All sanded and ready to stain.
Meanwhile, as you can see, we were not able to live in these rooms, so that meant we moved upstairs. It ended up being quite hectic, considering Mazy ended up with influenza that week as well. But in the end, it was in a way a blessing because she didn’t want to move and couldn’t move because she felt so sick. So we let her rest, sleep, etc. while we worked. I would ask her if she wanted to do something, and all she wanted to do was lay upstairs and rest. So, we continued to work and work!
And here are the newly stained floors! This is a view of our dining room. Don’t you just love the archways? Again, the character we just fell in love with, in this home!
Our bedroom stained and finished. We went with the Minwax’s Provincial stain and then a satin finish. If we had to choose a color and finish again, we would choose this again. We LOVE it.
What is not pictured is our little hallway and living room, that we also refinished. The living room had the same hardwood floor perimeter idea as our dining room, but we decided not to replace the wood underneath the rug, since we wanted to keep a rug there anyways. We learned so much about renovating through this project, but I have to say, everyone was right. It was completely worth it! There of course are little details that you don’t think of until you get into the project. Even after getting our house put back together, and getting rid of all the DUST (wowzas, no one can prepare ya for that), we wanted to fix up little things that have been bugging us since we moved in. Just little holes in base boards, caulking the wall/baseboard gaps, giving some areas a fresh coat of white paint, etc.
For the Sterks, no winter is complete if a house project isn’t accomplished! Not going to lie, we were both extremely glad this one was over with when it was, but the end result was worth it. We both do not do well with disorganization and clutter everywhere. We both get a little crabby about it! Hence we were quite motivated to git er dun.
We are not pros, but we sure learned a lot and are so incredibly thankful for this home! We have been able to keep in contact with the owners who sold it to us, and what wonderful people they are! They have answered a whole lotta questions for us and we couldn’t be more grateful to carry on the love in this home! We also had the owners 3 previous (lived here during the late 50s to 70s), stop by the first summer we were here! Oh how fun it was to hear the stories!
And if you didn’t see my post about the closet renovation…here is a little before and after:
It wasn’t pretty, folks.
And then the after:
We have a few other projects we’d eventually like to do, but we are going to take a break for a bit and recover from this one! And in the end, renovating ALL of our hardwood floors, putting in some new, was still cheaper than putting carpet in our bedroom! Who knew?
