Halfway there

Going upstairs at the Ugly Duckling you reach a small landing next to a large window before the stairs make a 90 degree turn for the last few steps. Covered in grimey linoleum it wasn't much to look at and removing layers of little loved floor treatments didn't do a whole lot to make it look better. Remember this?

[Before: Sad, damaged landing]

No question - this floor needed some serious repairs. There were fist-sized holes left behind from our woodloving pests and it was quite apparent that those floor boards had been neglected for many many years.

[In-Progress: damaged floor boards removed]

Once the floor boards were removed, we discovered the secret use of the hollow space between the ceiling of the closet underneath the stairs and the floor of the landing: waste plaster receptable. During the construction of the Ugly Duckling, the workers obviously hadn't bothered to dispose of left over plaster in a dumpster or trash can. Nuh-uh. They simply dropped it in there. Floor boards went over that and it was out of sight, out of mind.

They also dropped something else. Trash but this is the "kind of cool" type of trash

[Piedmont cigarette pack, front]

That's right! Joe discovered an empty pack of Piedmont cigarettes amidst the rubble. A quick search online turned out that they were really popular in the 1910s and are nowadays favored and sought after by collectors for the baseball cards that could be found in certain production lines of Piedmont cigarettes. Alas, no baseball card in ours and overall it's in rough shape but we think it's mighty cool after all.

[back]

This will make a great addition to our house's keepsake shadowbox we're planning to create at some point (once the chaos dies down).

[After: new floor boards]

After the excitement died down a bit, the new floor boards went up and now our new landing floor is waiting patiently for its stain and polyurethane so it will look just as great as our downstairs floors.