Part of the fun of living in a heritage house is the fact that there's always something new and weird to discover. Sometimes it's a 180 year old brick wall behind the drywall and sometimes it's a gigantic nest of malformed centipedes in the rubble basement. Last week for me, the discovery was not one, but TWO 100 year old floors beneath my current pine floor. Here's how I found out that little bit of information (it involves me being mental) ...
I sat quietly on my living room sectional a few mornings ago, a coffee in one hand, a phone in the other. I was talking to my sister Pink Tool Belt. All I can remember from the conversation is her saying "I'd rip that floor up". I have zero idea of how we got to that point in the conversation.
Was I talking about my foyer floor? I didn't think I was. I'm pretty sure I was talking about how the curve of spacetime intersects the event horizon of black holes. I mean, I usually am.
The next thing I knew I was foaming at the mouth (that's a dramatic way of saying brushing my teeth) and then running down to the basement to grab the nearest pry bar. I walked that pry bar straight into my living room and popped up a piece of my foyer floor.
Just one piece. Only to see what's underneath.
Let me step back a bit and explain a few things.
My house is around 180 years old and has the original 17" wide pine floors in the upstairs and the close to original 6" wide pine floors in my living room. The dining room has oak strip flooring that probably dates to around 1910.
I know the pine flooring in the lower part of the house isn't original to when the house was built because my house was built before tongue and groove flooring was invented and the lower level floors are tongue and groove. Tongue and groove flooring was invented in 1885. My house was built around 1840.
*** note - since writing this post I've had a floor guy come in to price having my floors sanded and he said he's seen very old farmhouses with the same floors as my old floors, so they could very well be original to the house ***
Whoever owned the house before me had knotty pine flooring installed in the foyer for some reason. I'm guessing they did it because they thought it would match the living room floor. Or because they were former Hee Haw set decorators. I'm not sure which.
When I got the floors refinished when I moved in almost 20 years ago I knew nothing about anything. I had the floors refinished because they were scratched and a disaster. Then I did what everyone did - I had them coated with a thick coat of polyurethane. This did two things. It brought out the absurdly orange colour of the pine floors and it created a surface that would show marks and scratches if you just looked at it sideways. Or dragged a 350 lb buffet across it.
So the other morning when I lifted up that one piece of knotty pine I really tried to convince myself I was only looking to see what was under it.
Nothing more.
I'd put the piece back.
Exactly 37 seconds later I had brought all my tools upstairs, wedged my feet into work boots and was maniacally prying quarter round off while singing a song with lots of swear words in it directed squarely at my sister.
57 seconds later I was here.
Just to see. Have a bit of a better look.
O.K. There we go. So that's what that looks like.
The front lawn covered in mangled knotty pine flooring looked considerably worse.
At this point I wondered if I could just leave the floor like this. If anyone would notice. I still had about 3 knotty pine boards that were underneath the buffet. Surely those 3 boards are what people would notice when they walked into the room - not the strip flooring covered with sperm squiggles of glue.
The floor is beautiful. It's an antique maple (?) strip flooring that's in perfect condition. You know, other than the big hole in the centre of it. To be fair, it wasn't a hole, but rather a hole that had been covered with plywood a billion years ago.
But I could deal with that. It could be patched a bit better. And I wouldn't mind a patch in the middle of the floor. It adds to the character of the house and is a tribute to the years it has stood.
Huh. I wonder what's under that plywood anyway.
Anddddddddd here we go again.
If you had told me the house, all of its contents, myself and my cat would all sink into the aforementioned black hole if I lifted that plywood, I would have turned my bum in your direction, tooted, and then ripped up the plywood.
Which of course is exactly what I did.
Under that plywood and a few of the pieces of maple is the almost original floor to the house. The same as what's in the living room.
Shit. Seriously. S.H.I.T.
Now what?
The floor was painted brown and underneath that it was painted blue. I could see that with my bare eyes. If I were to just sand a little bit of that floor I'd be able to see what it looked like under all that paint.
So I sanded the pine.
And a bit of the maple next to it.
You can see the pine has an apricot/orange undertone that turns full on pumpkin when you put any finish on it. The maple is clearer. WAY less orange undertones.
I ran down into my basement and looked up. The ceiling of my basement is the underside of my original floors so I can see if there are holes, or big gaps or anything scary. Other than the "hole" there didn't seem to be any other issues with the floor.
Shit. Again, I say shit.
And so now I sit and stare at the flooring. Day and night. Wondering what to do.
Do I rip up the maple to get to the older pine that matches the living room?
I talked about this as it was happening on my Instagram account. The amount of people who said to immediately rip up the maple flooring to see what was underneath was an alarming reminder of how few people have actually ripped up parts of their house.
Anyone who had ripped up a floor or parts of a house was a bit more judicious.
For now this is how I'll be living with my floors. Because I can't decide what to do. I know they'll all be refinished, I know I'm going to leave the floors raw (with either a soap or a wax finish probably) and I know I want to put something on them to combat the orange (wood lye).
The only problem is, I don't know which floors I want to do it on.
I *do* on the other hand know which sister will be getting a nice Christmas present and which will be getting a nasty, swear word filled song screamed at them.
→Follow me on Instagram where you can see me do a lot of this stuff before I blog about it.←
That is such a beautiful maple floor, I would enjoy it first as you know you can get a different look down the road. What about putting a beautiful tile where the hole is? Not sure if it is big enough or in the right spot for a point of interest. Just a thought. Those ripples are kind of funky and not so bad to look at while you decide. Looking forward to your decision and hope you can recycle those old floors for someone else to enjoy or use to repair their old floor and bring it back to its glory. Good luck.
The Maple Floors go with your chair!
but I am mental in this department and curiosity would have me ripping it out anyway!
Girl, leave the maple. 1) it's beautiful. Have it refinished and enjoy for some number of years.
2) in 20 years you can rip it up and refinish those original, original floors.
But seriously. If the maple are in perfect condition. Go with those. WHO KNOWS WHAT IS LURKING UNDER THE GOOD CONDITION MAPLE. You've been warned.
After seeing you at Christie for the first time in 65 years l missed having a sister.Thanks for straightening me out.Kicking myself for not buying the maybe Bernini chairs for outside pool chairs,a much better suggestion than ripping up floors.Hopefully they'll be on kijiji soon.
You know you are going to go to original. Cause if. You don't you will always wish you had.
Jane wing chair, lol. (Jane is the owner of the wing chair from my previous post everyone - the neighbour who let me borrow her chair to see what it would look like in my living room) ~ karen!
Jane seems to be a perfectly adorable neighbor!
Another vote for live with the maple first (check out Waterlox sealer), then consider going down to the original pine. Which you hate. Then you will have more "living with" info, and the decision might be obvious then.
ditto for Waterlox. It's durable. It's pretty idiot proof and I am a sufficiently determined idiot to have a refined opinion. Repels liquids, can be refinished in a teensy scrubbed up area rather than by a whole floor. My parent's 200 yr old farmhouse had Waterloxed pine floors and it rendered that divot-prone stuff almost bulletproof. It only takes a small amount so the Mafioso price for a gallon works out to not so bad. After, you just wipe down with a mild dish detergent like you would a dining room table. Maybe burnish with an old sweatshirt occasionally to bring up the shine.
I would think twice about ripping up that maple .....you never really know what surprises lie beneath ....I do hate those squiggly glue worms....they have to go...
I vote for the original, wide plank floors. But it would be really fun if you salvaged the flooring on top. Fun or swear word filled. One of those 2 for sure. 😁
Our old house had beautiful maple floors. We had them sanded and sealed with a water-based sealer that didn’t get all orange colored and kept it looking like natural wood, not wood coated in plastic. It also didn’t stink while drying and was more environmentally friendly.
When we tore up the horrid, candy-green carpet in the living room we found maple floor inlaid with walnut.
Even if a salvage place won’t pay for it, please do give that maple a second chance and get it to a reclamation place.
Wait, what>. what did you use? Bathroom (long post above) needs floor treatment. .
You're going to do what you're going to do no matter what we think but human nature being what it is, I have to give my two cents worth. My house is about the age of yours and here's why I'd want at least two layers between me and the creepy basement: The bugs and the musty smell. Unlike our usual whole week of humidity, we had a whole month and more of heat and humidity on PEI this year and my big dehumidifier downstairs and the heat pump set on dehumidify were running overtime. There was still the odd morning I'd come downstairs and get a whiff of musty basement. The bug problem was worse. I don't know what kind of ugly beetle it is but they come out at night and run across my floor. As soon as the humidity left, the bugs left, but I don't want them back! Probably only pertinent to my house is the fact that I heat 99% by heat pump so the basement gets cold in the winter. The floor would be pretty darned cold with only one layer.
My sister recently pulled up wall-to-wall carpet in her 150 year old railroad worker's dormitory house to find similar maple strip floors. When refinished they were beautiful and feel absolutely wonderful under bare feet. Go with the maple!
We've always lived in old houses and have refinished floors three times ourselves. About using a wax finish -- it is a lot of work to keep it looking nice. You have to keep re-applying wax, and buffing (we had 2 old buffers and the pads spun off constantly). Then in a few years, you need to strip off the wax and start again, a job you do on your knees. I know, it's tempting to do this because you don't have to deal with yellow or all that drying time for coats of polyurethane, but I would never do it again, even though it looks really nice right after you polish it. Our wide-strip pine is identical to yours in this 125 year old house and I'm not crazy about the orange glow from the poly either... maybe I should lift up a board to see what's under it.
I also don't like polyurethane because it changes the sound and the feel of the floor. All the warmth of the actual wood is gone. If you walk into a very old house with original floors that haven't been touched (or a store for that matter) you can tell the difference immediately. I'm also considering NO finish. At all. I know this is shocking to some, lol. ~ karen!
I would keep investigating options for the MAPLE. I'm pretty sure there are finishes that look exactly like no finish. Not sure how they age though.
Ha ha, the ugly pine floor you're tearing out to get to the maple is the exact floor in my house right now! There's nothing good under mine though so I'll just have to refinish it and live in a pumpkin. :)
My house is only 80 years old, but I feel your pain for sure.
RIP THAT SHIT OUT!
otherwise, you’re going to obsess about it for the next five years.
Why would you rip out maple to go back to pine? Which you hated? I realize the pine is original. But you h.a.t.e.d. it! Maple floors are such a beautiful color.
How about living with maple floors for a few years and then if you still feel like you need to go way back to the original then do it.
Hee Haw set decorator 🤣🤣🤣
You like that eh, Leslie? LOL. ~ karen!
Next week I'll be moving in to my 7th home in 25 years. I've seen it all; hardwood, shag carpet, tile, etc. My favourite floors were the maple floors I had when I lived in Winnipeg. I loved everything about that flooring. I would choose maple over pine any day!
Wait... “my girlfriend, his wife” has more problems than a botched floor reno.
Karen, I love your readers responses almost as much as your predicaments.
Well, if you ask me, (and you didn't) ...I LIKE IT!
NO ONE will EVER have a floor like that and it has a total modern artish flavor to it. It is as unique as YOU are! ;-)
I like the maple!!! Keep it, and if you decide you don't like it, go down to the next layer:)