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.←
I am solidly on Team Maple for all the reasons those smart people mentioned above.
Do we get a prize if we win??
Yes. Absolutely. Your prize will be helping me rip them out in 2 years time when I can't stand knowing what the floors underneath are like. :) ~ karen!
I totally understand your dilemma. Not that I have several layers of wood flooring in my house, I have only one - the original (oak, I think, but I cannot swear on it) floor from when the house was built in the 1960's. It was in a really rough shape so I had it sanded (but not prior to moving all my possessions into the house like any sane person would; I had is sanded after I had lived here for about 5 years [which should qualify me for the Darwin award]) and coated, like you and anybody else, in polyurethane.
The freshly sanded floor was beautiful, very pale and I loved it (my skin is also very pale but unlike the floor, I don't love it as much) but eventually, the polyurethane acquired a honey colour. I think the floor would survive one more sanding but I am not planning on it (sometimes I do learn from my own mistakes).
I love wider plank flooring so one of me would go with the pine flooring but the other half of me protests the orange. I look forward to an update which option you are going to go with.
Good luck.
The original floor boards under the maple would be the sub-floor, typically they would use the same wood for both layers - this is how the original floors in our 1850 house were installed. So, do you know if the maple continues thru your living and dining room? I would opt for not going down to the original floor boards (sub-floor) but instead if thats the look you want, source salvaged boards same species/age as the originals in your LR and then refinish all to be the same. Getting the colouration right is an entirely bigger project! ; ). Alternately you may have to consider going all new, check out pre-finished or unfinished wide plank, engineered character grade wood flooring. ~ C
Why would I get salvaged boards for the foyer? I'm confused. I have the *exact* same boards in my living room as what's under the maple in the foyer. So I'd be ripping out the exact match to my living room to put in ones that don't match. Oh Carol. You're so confusing. You may have your layers confused. The living room is original pine floors. Single layer. The foyer is strip maple over the original pine (that's exactly like the living room) I'd be having all the floors on the lower level sanded at the same time so I'd be starting with more or less the same colour. (light sanding to hopefully just bring off the finish and leave some of the staining in the grooves etc.) ~ karen!
"Hee Haw set directors"
LOL!!
My ambition in life is to have a floor with no crummy thresholds and level changes. Good luck!
I have to say that I'm going against the majority here. I love the maple. And it seems fitting for Canada anyway, a tribute to that heavenly elixir.
Ah, you're the second to nominate the maple in honour of Canada. :) I think I'd rather have the pine (also very Canadian) and drink the maple syrup. ~ karen!
Being totally uneducated about the cost, labor, or stress of it all, I would go with whichever one looks good with the floors you already have - the original, I think. My brother and wife redid your grandparents home built a hundred years ago, however, when lifting the house to square it all up and put in new pilings, they decided to add a second story and remove all the little rooms that had been added over the years at ground level - restoring the oridinal porches. It is just wonderful BUT where the living room floors were they were rotting and had to be replaced. They went with getting some old pine that had been sunk in the Suwannee River for decades and having it restored into planks that matched the original. It was VERY expensive but so worth it. Gorgeous floors throughout. Another thing - where the new second addition meets the wall in the lower 'office' where the stairs are located, there is obviously a difference in the wood panaling that was unable to be fixed. They decided to go with it and hung a small sign on a nail above the crooked part that reads: It's an old house! Normally not even noticed by guests wanting to see the home but always brings a chuckle when they do see it. The 3 lovely porches are so nice and well worth loosing the newer 'room' additions. Good luck with your choice.
Seems like the pine underneath everything could be what we'd call sub-flooring now. Granted, it seems like that's the way people used to have their floors back in the 1840's but I'd be super concerned about the gaps in the boards. You could get drafts from your rubble basement and the centipedes would have more ways to make it into your living spaces. I feel like you might also be concerned about centipedes.
The previous owners were probably trying to make the house more comfortable by laying the maple over the pine. Our art studio in college had those original wide plank floors that they refinished. Every time you spilled something you'd have to run downstairs to see what you ruined. NOT fun.
My vote is for the maple. Besides, maple > pine any day.
I really like the second layer...the skinny stuff.
I love the maple!
I am assuming the older, still mostly covered, pine is level with your living room flooring? Curious minds and all. I, myself, would go with the simply gorgeous maple flooring, which I am also assuming is level with your other flooring?? Now wait just a darn minute! Both older maple and pine flooring can't be level with the other flooring. What's going on here?? Good luck no matter what you go with. I know it will be stunning!
Ok here is my 2 cents ... what I know of homes built of the era. They usually put in Pine which was due to be covered later by Maple. An they usually painted the pine to help make it easier to clean plus help help keep slivers down. The Pine was never meant as a finished flooring. Even back then they knew it was softwood and floors needed a harder surface.
It allowed families to get in to homes sooner while waiting for their choice of hardwood to arrive. An usually as they could afford it they would put a tile in the foyia due to the fact it could handle moisture better than wood. Maple was the main choice for the main floor as it showed prestige, pine upstairs was fine as visitors didn’t go up the stairs. Everything was about prestige.
Save your self lots of heart ache and keep the Maple it truly is a much better choice of flooring. You will never regret it.
Is there a sub floor under your pine? If not maybe that IS your sub floor and the maple (which is gorgeous btw) is your flooring. I had a fir sub floor under my white oak floors.
I kind of like the mustaches all over the floor. Like someone was practicing them over and over with a big fat brush of india ink.
Maple. If the hole is in a prominent spot and the flooring guy says it's worthwhile, maybe it's possible to shift a few boards around to fill it with original maple, and patch the new hole with new maple and hide it with furniture or a rug.
We are in a similar cascading project situation. Our house had two decommissioned wood burning fireplaces when we moved in, with really ugly 1960's brick hearths surrounded by 1/8" wood paneling which had to go. The upstairs one had a brick facing, which as it turned out was not secured to the wall beyond a single screw toenailed in at the centre of the mantle, so it leaned out from the wall in a dramatic fashion when we popped the mantle off. So we knocked it down and threw the bricks out the window onto the lawn. Then we had the shingles and sheeting replaced last winter on the roof, and had them knock the top off the chimneys in the process. This summer we decided we should take the chimneys down and frame in the resulting hole and fix the siding etc. We set up scaffolding, and the next day was the first day of a 35°C plus heat wave which lasted far longer than we were comfortable with. In the process, I thought "I'll check out that drippy gutter while I'm up here". Then we discovered the funnel at the bottom of the downspout which led into the perimeter drains had rusted out, which explains why the flowers at that end of the narrow brick
raised brick bed were doing so well. So we popped the paneling off the inside of the rec room wall, and found that the water had made the exterior plywood punky. So then we took the brick bed off the outside, replaced the sheeting, patched in the vinyl siding on both sides of the house with some left over from when we did the garage reno (that's a while other story!), and now since two of four sides of the room were open we took down the rest and are rewiring that end of the house, reinsulating everything, drywalling, flooring, etc. And just when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, my dad has suggested moving the doorway of the room.
wanna come visit? we can share war stories. and maybe we can replant my garden which I neglected to mention in my previous over-long and tedious renovation post. Vancouver Island is wet but warmish in the winter, and if the chickens don't eat the grass seed all of the dust kicked up by mr. digger man will have converted itself (herself?) to lawn. sounds like you got Renos under your belt and in a few weeks my tub will be tiled so we can shower in peace....
Hi Karen
The modern Water Based Urethanes, don't turn everything orange like the Old ones used to. They actually come out clearer. They do require more coats but dry quicker. Don't use exterior for floors as it is actually softer and sticker to deal with the elements and temperature variations. Also a sanding sealer as a base coat can help to retain the colour.
Also that wide pine original floor is going to be peppered with nail holes. You will have to fill them. And if its like mine, 10 21x20 holes for heating grates from the 4 different heating systems installed over the years.
Good Luck with your decision.
Another maple vote here. I know I'm crazy maybe, but I would choose maple over pine any day. Perhaps previous owners felt the same way!
I’m torn between feeling excited or what if you uncover a new horror movie plot.
In the late '60's my husband and I moved to the US for several years after university. At one point we found ourselves living in the small (7 houses and 1 church) town of Mendon, Vermont. We rented the old Methodist parsonage with its dirt floor basement and its crooked floors (had to set the brakes on the baby carriage). The living room floor was made of very wide painted boards with significant gaps between them. Turning on the basement light made for quite a nice light show in the living room at night, and with all those gaps sweeping the floor was a breeze. The heating system was comprised of some kind of furnace in the basement and a 30" square grate in the corner of the living room and a 12" square grate in the ceiling directly above it, luckily in the baby's bedroom. Heat just rose, as heat will do --- no pipes involved. Perhaps your house had the same "system" in the early days. Have you checked the upper floor directly over that hole for signs of a smaller grate? Good luck making your decision, Karen. I don't envy you.
Maple is my choice. If only you could bring back the 180 year old smell of the wood, you know, that five and dime store smell. Like Queen Annes Lace smell.
The maple, of course. It's inescapable that the pine is going to orange over time regardless of what treatment you choose.