Comments on: Embracing My Fear of Over-Renovating

By: Kelsey

Kelsey — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 22:20:45 +0000

Love what you are doing- such a cool project! My BIL is a hardwood flooring contractor, and he specializes in residential projects. He does a lot of refinishing of old wood floors including my parents’ 1930’s house. Older wood floors are great because they are thicker and can be refinished many more times compared to new floors, plus they have so much character! He introduced us to the Bona products, they have some great tips about cleaning and some products that clean but still protect your floor. https://us.bona.com/daily-clean.html

By: Haley

Haley — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 15:31:51 +0000

I love that your conscious of this. We had some old wood floors in our apartment, but have new vinyl flooring in our new (old) house. I miss the character of the old house and that the old wood floors hid dirt and crumbs a lot better.

By: Megan Anderson

Megan Anderson — Sat, 26 Aug 2017 14:47:45 +0000

I have original, over 100 year old floors! Vacuuming the gaps is really helpful (though the previous owner plugged in the gaps, in the winter the floors shrink and a lot of them have pulled out). My favorite thing to clean them with is tea! It has the right PH balance to clean the floors without taking off the finish and helps out with the patina and shine. I just throw two tea bags in a big pot of boiling water, then let it cool enough so I can throw a reusable cloth mop pad in and ring it out. It works great!

By: Suesan Kennard

Suesan Kennard — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 18:17:24 +0000

In our 164-year-old Ohio house we had original floors in the dining room and upstairs. In the upstairs, they were fine but downstairs in the dining room, there was alot of bend and give. We had some gaps and while I loved the authenticity, gaps + Ohio winters were not the most ideal situation. Because the house sat on a fieldstone foundation, we had a lot of slope and drift in the floors. Nothing was plumb or square in the whole house.
While I loved the charm and the age and the authenticity, sometimes, it just got hard to live with at times.

By: Megan

Megan — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:17:14 +0000

Have you thought about buying old floors? I know that in the Bay Area of CA they are knocking down a lot of houses in order to build bigger ones. There are organizations that accept the donations of whole houses and take out all the fixtures, flooring, etc., and warehouses them for reuse. Maybe you could rent a trailer and bring home a houseful of wood floors.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 12:17:01 +0000

I love that you’re staying true to the house and use as much of the original home as possible. That’s what adds the extra character and charm! I can’t wait to see it all finished 🙂
Best,
Kelly

By: Paige

Paige — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:07:28 +0000

We just moved into a 1911 farm house and have been ripping up carpet and subflooring to find the original pine floors. They’re not in amazing shape – pine is a soft wood. They are splintered and gapped and not perfect. Other than a few water damaged planks, we’re going to keep them all. I’ll get big rugs to conceal some of the worst spots. But I love them too much to replace them (I literally started screaming the first time I found them under pee-soaked carpet.)

By: Sara

Sara — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 10:04:24 +0000

We have our original 1905 floors – maple on the first and second floors, and fir in the attic – with two young kids, two cats and a dog. There are gaps and scratches, and I’m sure there’s dirt stuck in the gaps, but we don’t worry too much about it and still love them! I can’t imagine having new floors in our old house – it would look so weird. I sweep every couple of days and damp mop once every week or two, and they are perfect for our house.

By: Mary Wilding/My Tribute Journal

Mary Wilding/My Tribute Journal — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 15:12:31 +0000

In reply to Chris. This is what my father-in-law (who was a master cabinet builder and wood worker) used to do with wood floors. It always looked great!

By: Bridget in Minnesota

Bridget in Minnesota — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 02:56:25 +0000

I can send you pictures of the well-loved and well-worn floors in our 1898-1900 home! Please email me!

Bridget in Minnesota