stair landing
Emily Oster
Since getting the keys to our house last Monday, we have been mainly focused on the flooring (and cleaning - so much cleaning!). Last week, our amazing flooring guys got straight to work pulling out carpet in two bedrooms, on the stair landing and on the stairs. This is what it looked like before.
Its hard to tell from the pictures but the carpet was in really bad shape. Also we learned the former homeowner was a smoker so it had to go - immediately! After pulling up the carpet, we discovered that there is no hardwood in the smaller bedroom, the hardwood in the bigger bedroom is covered in paint splatter and is unable to be sanded/refinished, you all already know about the stairs and the boards on landing were partial covered with paint and unable to be sanded/refinished. I will get to our plans for the bedrooms but today I want to talk about the landing which we worked on all weekend.
Under the carpet the hardwood looked like this...
Notice the paint splatter, the old adhesive and just general state of despair. The hardwood is original (we think) so the boards are super thin - like an 1/8 of an inch - and also quite wavy. Because of these reasons, our budget and our desire to maintain the character of the house, we decided to do our best to clean the existing boards and just have them resealed. So for the majority of the day Sunday and part of the day yesterday, I scraped and scraped and then scraped so more. I haven't had the opportunity to take very good pictures and we are also adding new thresholds at each doorway so its a project still in process...but I have to say I am very happy with the results thus far.
I relied on mostly this type of painters tool and this floor cleaner to the do work. Jeff also used a razor blade to get at some of the toughest areas.
Tomorrow, we will paint the shoe molding for the floor guys to install and clean the floor with vinegar to try to extract as much smoke smell as possible. The floor guys return at the end of the week so I will make sure to share updated/hopefully finished pictures then! I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!