September 24, 2009

Our Next Project

Lee was correct, the mystery picture was the underside of hardwood flooring, 3 & 1/2 by 3/4 inch red oak. (BTW, if you haven't visited Lee and Robin's blog, Farm Folly, you really need to. There's lots of interesting things going on over there. )

Oak hardwood flooringOur next project will be putting a new floor in the dining room. We got a great deal on Craigslist, and were able to buy what we needed to do both the dining room and hallway, for 2/3 of what we budgeted for the dining room alone.

Those of you who have read this blog for awhile may recall the first photos of our dining room (those here.) It has some nice touches such as the French door and the built in corner cabinets, but it also had ugly pink carpeting. When we tore this same carpeting up from the living room, we discovered a lovely oak hardwood floor in pretty good shape. When we tore the carpeting out of the dining room, it looked like this...

Dining room floor, beforeIf it doesn't exactly look like hardwood, that's because it's honest to goodness, old-fashioned linoleum (not vinyl), in a brown wood-look pattern. It's in two big sheets with a seam down the middle of the room, bordered in black. The lighter colored blotch you see on the right of the above photo is where an old wood or coal burning stove once stood. (We can still see where they plastered over the flue in the dining room wall between the windows.)

Here are a couple of close-ups

Pock marks on dining room linoleumNot sure what those pock marks are, but there are a bunch of them.

It's not in very good shape, is it.Here's the seam and the border. As you can see, it's not in very good shape.

What is odd about this room is that there is no subfloor. At least not what we would consider a subfloor. Under the linoleum is tongue and groove hardwood oak, with nothing under that.

So, the dining room floor will be the next project after we finish the woodstove alcove and get the woodstove in. Dan is finishing up laying brick for that project today. I will get some photos and post an update on that over the weekend.

Our Next Project text & photos copyright September 2009

5 comments:

Michelle said...

Congrats on the deal! It will be lovely!

Renee Nefe said...

congrats! What a deal! I know you'll love it when it's done.

Julie said...

I've had two old houses and you never know what your going to find under carpet!
I love the red oak, that is what my cabinets are.

Robin said...

Nice! With the new fire place and new flooring your house is going to feel like a million bucks. I am going to be looking forward to the before and after pictures of the floor.

Dorothy said...

I bet the oak floor will look beautiful.

What is a subfloor? I wonder if it is anything like our house?

We have a floor up at the moment in a room that we're working on. Under the floor level there are wooden joists running the opposite way to the floor boards, the joists are supported in walls and bellow the walls is a concrete foundation, which is about 2 feet below floor level.