How I Spent my Summer Vacation - Day One

I usually take one week of summer vacation during the kids’ swimming lessons because I love taking them to the pool. The downside is that we can’t take a trip anywhere because they’d miss lessons. But the upside is that we can do home improvement projects, and have a whole week to work on them instead of trying to cram it into a weekend.

Since we had all week to work on the floor we weren’t in a big hurry to get started, but by Sunday afternoon Teacher couldn’t wait any longer to start excavating.

He discovered that the flooring we and by “we” I mean Teacher and my Dad installed came up WAY more easily than it went down.

Underneath was a layer of particle board, which was challenging to get out…

But not as bad as plywood would’ve been. The hardest part was that they’d put SO many nails in it I was beginning to wonder if they’d trapped a ghost under there. I know, too much Supernatural.

It didn’t take long to find a disappointing surprise. Apparently someone decided to go at the floor with a dremel-like tool and sanded it down 1/8″.

Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking. Then I wonder if some future owner of the house will wonder the same thing about us!

Oh well, we knew the floor would need work, and that shouldn’t be too hard to fix.

I couldn’t wait to see if the hardwood continued into the hallway so Teacher obliged and turned that way.

At first I thought it didn’t and my heart sank.

But no, it was just more old ugly tile! I have no idea why they put tile down in some areas and not others, but since it protected the floor I’m not complaining.

Teacher wanted to finish the half of the kitchen he’d started so he headed toward the dining room.

Hmmmm. I guess we’ll have to patch a larger area than we originally thought. I wonder why there’s no floor there – maybe there were built-in cupboards?? Oh, how I WISH the house hadn’t been remodeled in the 60s! Imagine the original trim and kitchen cupboards…

iMatt watched me pull a couple of nails from the floor then grabbed a crowbar and tried one himself. He thought it was so much fun he found some safety glasses and went to work on the nails and staples.

We’re almost all the way to the bathroom! And by “we” I mean Teacher, who’s been doing all the hard work.

Look at that tile. I could live with the star design if I had to, but the other piece is just plain ugly.

So close I can taste it! No, wait, that’s just destruction dust in the air.

Is it all hardwood or are we in for a nasty surprise? The suspense is killing me!

Oh bummer – right in front of the bathroom door there’s a patch. Teacher thinks it might have been a floor vent. Oh well, we can fix that too. The rest looks like it’s the original hardwood. Hooray!

There’s a weird place where the flooring doesn’t meet the wall that we’ll have to figure out what to do with.

iMatt is really going to town on those nails and staples. I was really impressed by how hard he worked on them.

Time to wrap it up for the day.

Obviously all the commotion didn’t bother Kippy, who’s napping in his usual spot. Silly kitty!

I’m absolutely thrilled by what we’ve uncovered so far. It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than it could’ve been.

I’m guessing the original trim was thicker than what we’ve got now, but that’ll be fairly easy to fix. We want to bring the house back to more of a 1920s feel anyway.