Famous last words..."I wonder what is under that carpet?"

Those were the words coming out of my dear husbands mouth on day 2 of an 8 day off stretch for him. We had, just moments ago, been discussing what color of bookcases we were going to put in the office...because that was our project for the week... but now, I had been challenged. We had both been wondering what kind of floor was under the living room carpet since the day we moved in. The carpet was an okay carpet, but it was light colored and with 4 kids, it doesn't work very well, stains show up way too easily. So I found a hammer, and pried up the shiny brass threshold, and then pulled back the carpet and pad, and lo and behold found hard wood flooring that matches the hard wood flooring that is in the dining room!

Unlike the dining room which is stained a honey color, this was stained a beautiful dark wood color, perhaps a mahogany or a reddish walnut! SO beautiful. So, as you can well imagine, we had to take up the carpet. We rolled it back...

And then started the day long project of pulling up the 6 million staples that held down the pad (in addition to the extra set of staples that was left from another carpet)...


and pried up the two sets of tack strips that were all along the edge of the room (one from a previous carpet)


We got our 2 oldest boys to help (sorry about the resolution: dark room, phone camera)

And what we found as we pulled the rest of the carpet and pad back was a center rectangle that was unstained. This is commonly found in older homes (mine is from 1898), they did not stain the center of the floor, but just covered it in an area rug. In fact a lot of the homes didn't use the "good wood" for the center, since it would just be covered in a carpet anyway, and would sometimes use just plywood for the center, so we got lucky!


There were just a few areas that are going to need more work than just a sanding and staining. As you can see in the left and right pics below, there was apparantly something built in that is no longer there! We can only speculate as to what it was, but where the hardwood was taken up they put plywood in its place, so we will try and match up some hardwood planks to repair the damaged area. In the picture on the left the white stuff is filler that was smeared in the cracks, so that will also have to be dealt with. As for the middle pic, it looks like water staining, so hopefully it will just sand out and take a staining okay.


So for now, we have finished the "deconstruction" of the carpet, and have put the room back together. We got an area rug for the center and will probably put our work on hold until after the holidays. So here is the semi-"finished" room:


So consider this part one of the living room facelift, I will blog more as we get more done.