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 that kinda worked with the original floors to make them disappear. But not really.
this was boring. boooring. So i painted them. Blue. It's my favorite color, a dark neutral, and might as well. This is a color called Deep Galaxy which is a Behr floor paint color. (formulated for floors, and I guess the colors are specific?)
This is better. still boring. but better. Why did I not strip and refinish or replace the floor? So many reasons! 1. budget. I don't have the cash, and this house is not ever going to be worth enough to recoup money spent if i over do it. 2. That's a lot of work. and 3. I know from investigating that there's white paint under the brown, and I think yellow under that? there's a lot of paint.
I lived with the blue for a while, but then i wanted to spice it up. I saw a picture of wood floors finished using a steel wool and vinegar solution that gave them a variegated blue finish.
I got this image from Daniel Kanter's blog
manhattan-nest... and he got it from someone else's home plans... I'm sorry to say I don't know how far the trail goes to give proper credit.
Obviously, I'm not going strip the floors so i could stain it. But I can paint! So I bought 4 more shades of blue ranging to grey paints and used them to turn it into this:
This looked great for a long time.... sealed with a water-based poly. But it wasn't really durable, scratched or peeled if abraded and i knew it wasn't the best for long term resale. It's a very personal choice.
Floors really set the tone for a space. They need to hit that note where you notice them but not dwell on them, so you eyes can move around the space comfortably.
My next completed project will show my plans for the future of this floor. Stay tuned!
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