Spring 22 ORC Week Four: Hardwood Floor Progress
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It’s week four of the One Room Challenge, the official half way point! I can’t believe how quickly it’s flying by. Last week we rolled up the old carpet and finally got to see what was going on with the hardwood floor underneath. Overall it’s in amazing condition and we’re so happy to have unstained, unsealed hardwood to bring out the beauty of! One area I didn’t share last week did have some previous damage, though.
We’re not entirely sure what happened, but our best guess is something spilled and adhered to floor. The prior homeowner had used a saw to cut through the floor around the area, cutting through some of the subfloor as well, and then probably decided covering it with carpet was easier. We realized having something stuck to the hardwood plus the thick cuts from the saw blade made it pretty impossible for us to salvage this area. We decided the best solution would be to cut the floor in a more natural looking pattern using an oscillating multi-tool with a much thinner blade and replace the boards with matching hardwood we found at Home Depot.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the area before we cut it out and disposed of it. Because we couldn’t be sure what the material contained, we were extremely cautious, taping off the door to the hallway and spraying down the area to limit any dust from getting in the air. We also wore our respirator masks, goggles and gloves just in case.
We’re still in the process of working on the floor, but here’s my mockup of how the new floorboards will (hopefully!) blend pretty seamlessly:
The picture isn’t perfectly straight so some boards look a little off, but the new boards will line up with the existing ones. I also tried to utilize the cut edges we already have, so a few boards will match up along those edges. To keep things as easy as possible for us, I kept the six boards on the right the same length and the ten boards on the left the same slightly longer length to cover the bigger hole. Fingers crossed it works out!
Even though we didn’t make as much progress in the room as we’d hoped to this week, we figured out the solution to a problem we didn’t even know we had until now. Taking this extra time to fix the floor the right way will be so worth it in the long run, and I can’t wait to show you how it looks next week!
