Trials and Tribulations of 150 Year Old Floors

I knew there would be challenges in this house, but the floors were the least of my worries.  They had been covered with wall to wall carpeting for decades, so I assumed they were well protected and in good shape.  I budgeted accordingly – big mistake.  They’ve turned into a budget buster.  

 

We should have called this the house of many flooring types.  The foyer, living room and dining room all have 2” wide maple (or so we thought) floors.  The kitchen is sheet vinyl.  The office is 2 1/4” birch flooring, presumably laid over top of the 2” maple (but probably ruined due to lots and lots of nails through it)

The second floor hall and tiny room have 2 1/4” birch – same as the office downstairs.  The bedrooms have wide pine boards (no tongue and groove).  It’s not unusual to find the simpler flooring on the second floor and I was fine with that.  It’s part of the house’s history.

 

But then it all started to unravel as the work unfolded.  

 

I really wanted the main living area to flow seamlessly with the 2” flooring that's original to the house. We cleaned up a sample piece and determined it was maple, so we had lots of new maple custom milled to match (at triple the price of regular flooring $$$).  That would give us enough wood to replace the kitchen floor (I don’t even try to save kitchen floors, they’re always full of water stains and holes from old plumbing).  

400 sq ft of new, custom milled 2" maple flooring

We thought we could find lots of wood to patch problem areas (ex: heating vent holes in living room and dining room), when the kitchen floor was taken up.  But as the guys got into it, they discovered the kitchen had two sheets of luan plywood screwed and nailed over the original 2” wood in the kitchen.  It was a miserable job to remove and there simply wasn’t any way to save the antique flooring underneath of it. 

 

So how do we patch the old floor vents, spaces where walls were opened up and problem areas under the radiators?  We can’t use the new maple, it will stick out like a sore thumb.  

So many places need patching in the original flooring

Our only option - we had to tear out the foyer floor, to give us sufficient patching material.  That means the foyer will now also have the new maple.  I was devastated, I really wanted a uniform floor from the moment you walk through the front door. But sadly, that flooring had to go.

Foyer with old flooring removed - to provide patching material for living & dining room

 

But wait, there were more problems. As the guys started to sand through the dark finish on the original floor, we discovered it wasn’t all uniformly maple.  Instead, we discovered it also has birch and ash mixed in (probably not unusual, given the period when the house was built.  They used what was available!).  So now the maple floor we are installing in the kitchen and foyer will be much lighter (new maple is very, very light – think Scandinavian finishes), without that wood type variation. 

Once the dark finish was sanded off, we discovered maple, birch and ash wood

 

At this point, I was starting to lose it…..  See the dramatic difference as Pat starts sanding the new and old floor? 

 

Pat talked me down off the ledge by finding a stain to minimize the difference.  Typically, maple doesn’t take stain well.  But by water treating it before the stain, it allows the grain to pop and the stair adheres much more readily.  Take a look at the photo below.  Freshly sanded maple with just a clear finish looks blazingly white (IKEA bright!).  So he prepared some sample boards and we started experimenting with different stain colors.  After some experimentation, we came up with a color that will closely match the natural color of the original floors.  

 

With that plan in place, we addressed the 2^nd floor.  When we looked at the primary suite (now comprised of 3 different rooms from the original house), we realized we didn’t have enough of the original pine to fill in all the gaps and damaged boards.  So, we made the difficult decision to replace it.  We’re going to use oak, which is certainly different than pine, but it’s readily available and a nice traditional touch that isn’t as crazy expensive as the custom milled maple from the first floor.

And on a bright note, the stair treads are all pine.  Some are damaged and need to be replaced.  If we used new pine, it would look really odd.  Old wood has different colors, but also much tighter grain that can’t be matched with new.  So at least we have lots of antique pine boards to create the replacement treads!

So the guys are busy getting the floors in and it's all coming together.  The patches made with the narrow 2" flooring we got from the foyer are making the old holes in the floor disappear! 

The old heat vent is getting carefully 'stitched in' with original flooring

You'll never be able to see this patch once the floor has been sanded

  This won't be a quick process, but getting these floors cleaned up will make this home shine!

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