It’s time for floors! When we bought the house the floors were a major selling point. We both love hardwood, and honestly I love hardwood that has a few dings and dents, adds character and such. The refinishing process is well worth the work. Months ago we started sanding, but we’ve kind of been off and on. This is really the opposite of how one should finish their floors. But here we are.

Over Thanksgiving we finally tackled the most intimidating step, patching the damaged area of the floors with new boards. I think maybe we subconsciously wanted to wait until we upped our handy skills, and we really have. The hole in our master bedroom left from removing the old closet is gone! Thanks to a short This Old House video it wasn’t the hardest thing we’ve done.

I think we accomplished our goal of making it look like there was never a whole in first place. The trickiest part is getting the boards out to feather in the new ones, without breaking any around them…we only broke a few surprisingly. The key is the split the old board so it can come out in pieces. I’ve learned I need to not be afraid to hit things with a hammer ten times as hard as I think I need to.

Also we did find new oak, but without making a special order, all the boards we found in store have finish, yay more sanding :). It was a fun scavenger hunt to try and sift through and find the perfect board for the least amount of cutting waste. Overall I think it turned out brilliantly.

So now we have to just finish the last bits of sanding before we can start staining, this weekend’s goal. We did pick out the stain and get all the supplies for the polyurethane. We went with the middle color, not too light, not too dark. I’ve finally convinced Seth that painting our bedroom walls navy is a good idea, so I didn’t want the floors to be too dark.

Next post, finished floors (fingers crossed). And the update on the many other projects we tackled during our Thanksgiving break.