kitchen floor

Despite the fact that I went from 3 promised posts per week to a whooping 7 realized posts per week, I'm still woefully behind writing about all the projects, big and small, that are happening at our Ugly Duckling.

Work is progressing at a steady pace and even though we are a little behind to where we wanted to be at this point, it's a nothing short of a miracle that there haven't been any major setbacks. Talk to anybody who's renovated/restored/built a house before and you know that a delay of a month or two (or more!) is almost inevitable. We're one -week- behind; considering our jam-packed before-move to-do-list, it's next to nothing. Our contractor's are running a tight ship :o)

Anyways, I'm way more than a week's worth of entries behind posting but it is what it is. Between working, household chores, family and house I'm amazed at myself that I manage to keep the family posted via this blog at all. I'm expecting to pass out for a 6-month-long nap as soon as the door closes behind the last moving box though ...

Right now the biggest project are the floors. Linoleum removed, we learned to our joy that the floors in the kitchen could be saved giving us original heart pine floors everywhere downstairs except for the powder room and the mud-laundry room. Woot! But this wouldn't be Florida if there weren't any termite damage and that, of course, needed to be repaired. This is what it looks like

[Repairs in progress]

The damaged boards are sounded out (not always is termite damage obvious; the little beasts tend to live a sneaky existence and love to eat wood away from the inside, leaving a thin layer on top to prevent detection. Until your heel sinks in, that is) and then carefully cut out. A piece of new pine wood is cut to size and fitted in (like a glove).

[Before & After repairs]

Once all the missing pieces are filled in, the entire floor is sanded to a smooth even finish. And then, then the magic happens with stain and polyurethane.

Why didn't we refinish our own floors? You know, it sounds like a very straightforward and rather simple project but it's one of those where mishaps can lead to disastrous consequences. Even the blog world is divided on this issue: some refinish their own floors quite successfully, others just pass up this project. We consider this money well spent, and I'm DYING to show you what the floors look like now!

More on that later!