I'm floored

And madly in love to boot.

This week our fabulous contractor team started working on refinishing the downstairs floors in preparation for the arrival of our kitchen on Monday. Since I didn't make it over to our Ugly Duckling on Monday (you know, playing catch-up with laundry, dishes and general household cleaning chores left over from the weekend) I dropped in Tuesday to the glorious sight of this

[Hallway looking into the livingroom]

And this
[Future library with door to downstairs half bath]

And this[Original entrance at not-original location in Livingroom]

Glorious heart pine floors sanded down and cleaned of years of grime, grease, stain and poly. Again, a rather unexpected touch of beauty in our modest old house. This type of floor was rather difficult to come by at the time when the Ugly Duckling was built, and it certainly wasn't an inexpensive choice [at least, that's what I gathered from this site here http://www.heartwoodpine.com/why-heart-pine/]

[Pretty & Funky grain]

The stain we'll be using is "Dark Walnut" by Minwax and a satin poly for a slightly glossy finish. We'd originally agreed on "English Chestnut" but our contractor warned us that the reddish heartwood pine floors would turn that color into something closer to orange than a warm reddish brown. We tested it on a damaged board and it looks great, and when I swung by the house today, Mrs Gloria had tried it on one of the stair treads and boy, what a fantastic color did that turn out to be!

I can't wait to see the end result!