Spring 22 ORC Week Five: Fixing the Floor
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Week five of the One Room Challenge is here and we’re so excited to share the progress we’ve made! Neither of us could have guessed we’d still be working on the floor by the fifth week, but we knew going into this challenge any number of things could have been wrong with it. We had to have some flexibility with our timeline and shift the rest of our projects back, but we knew it would be worth it to be able to fix the floor the right way.
Fixing the Subfloor
Last week I shared the problem we found with this section of the floor. A previous homeowner had cut through the floorboards, accidentally going through some of the subfloor as well. Those planks weren’t supported on both ends anymore, making them bend under pressure. There was a weirdly sweet smell when Zach cut through the remaining boards, and when we removed them, we made an…interesting discovery. Under the floor was a TON of beeswax from old beehives! Fortunately there weren’t any bees in sight, but just goes to show, you never know what you’ll find in an old house.
To create a stable base for the new flooring, Zach cut out the loose planks and replaced them with new boards. We’ll fill in the gaps and lay down new rosin paper before installing the new hardwood planks.
The grey areas on the old subfloor is an adhesive that was used to hold down the hardwood planks. It was only used in this area, though. The rest of the floor has rosin paper under it.
Replacing the Hardwood
We spent Saturday driving around to various lumber suppliers and Home Depots, trying to find a match to our floor sample. It was a lot more challenging than we’d expected. The hardwood flooring options were stained and sealed already, and planks of raw hickory were expensive for this small of an area. We knew we had to figure out something fast, and our best option at that point seemed like the raw hickory planks. They were 1/4 inch too wide and 1/8 inch too tall, though, so we’d have to cut and sand them down. We weren’t thrilled, but we were willing to do whatever it took to make it work.
The next day I was upstairs marking the floor with a pencil when I opened the closet door and had a lightbulb moment!💡 I couldn’t believe we hadn’t thought of this already, but the hardwood floor continues into the closet. The exact number of boards we needed were right there in front of us. Zach used the oscillating multi-tool again to cut the edges and pried the boards out.
We now have all of the boards ready to install and Zach is almost finished cutting the new edges. Hopefully staggering the pattern a bit will help the new boards blend in better.
Today is our five year wedding anniversary and tomorrow we’re flying out to California to celebrate our friends getting married, so we’re taking the weekend off! We’ll be back next week with more room updates :)
