A Tanglewood we weave

  The story of the living room floor! Man, I am developing a deep relationship to this house... especially since I have adopted my dog, Bentley.  Not only am I systematically redecorating, thanks to Bentley....I have cleaned more of it more often than I have ever done before. Today, he *(note, not me... HE) tracked in dog poo and got it on the couch and floor. Just enough that i kept getting wiffs of it, until I found the paw prints.  So i laundered the couch cushions, and thoroughly swept, vacuumed, and mopped the room.  Which task was oddly satisfying.  And, it allowed me to play my favorite game: "House detective!" This is almost certainly the original floor from 1940. This area has been low income & blue collar for decades, only now are flippers and single white collar folks moving in with the money and interest to replace floors... and I haven’t. At some point, the living room was carpeted, you can see they left a clear spot by the door (now a window) a...

 A Hall Upgrade And so our tale of a house reborn continues.   The next “room” I targeted was the hall.   It’s not really a room, or a hall… but it’s kind of both.  Here it is marked on the "Master plan" It’s the space between the foyer, the east bedroom, the bathroom, and the dining room. It’s its own space.  This used to be the actual center of the house before the kitchen and west bedroom were added. So  let’s look at the before: This whole section of the house was covered with paneling and painted, YEARS ago.   I’m not sure why, but there are some places the drywall is damaged, so maybe this was just cheaper than repair. When they put the paneling in, they removed the door casings, and finished it with polystyrene edging. The floor is painted and patched where the old floor heater was… the ceiling is gross popcorn. Popcorn applied OVERTOP of an old “whole house fan”.    A Whole house fan was a popular way to keep houses cool in the days...

 Let’s keep talking about floors! Most of the house is 2.25” wide oak plank flooring.    I needed a cheap way to make the middle of the house, where the floors are damaged and painted, match the rest of the house… at least visually. So I found this peel and stick vinyl plank flooring by Trafficmaster at Home Depot .   The color is nearly an exact match (it’s “honey oak”).    The only problem is that it is 6” wide planks.  I felt like this would not quite work because of the wider planks.  So I took an unconventional extra step to cut the planks narrower. I used a makeshift jig and a utility knife to cut them in half.  The 3” wide planks are much closer to the original flooring.  Brilliant!   But… Yeah, there’s still a problem.   I’m not a machine.   (really, I’m not!)   The cut pieces aren’t exactly square and straight, and neither is the floor! So there are gaps between planks that are not ideal.  ...

 Hey you guys! It's been busy,  I'm working on another finished project post, but I thought i might go more traditional blogger and talk about process or an ongoing thing.  So, here's the floor conversation! The original floors in my house were all 2.25" wide 3/4" think oak planks. They have mostly survived 80 years of family and renovations and just life.  The front two rooms and the east bedroom are more or less ok, although they could use refinishing. The middle part of the house, now the dining room, has not faired as well. walls have been removed, or relocated and it seems no one ever redid the floor. (the marks of this don't photograph well, but you can see where a wall was removed and scars where they patched holes left by walls with whatever was available. in one place, it looks like particle board.  This is all post facto archaeology, because it happened before i came. When I bought the house, these damaged floors had all been painted a medium brown t...