Tuesday, January 17, 2012

What A Wooderful Sight!

Would you like to see something nasty? 


Can I get a collective "ewww" because our carpet is Nasty (with a capital N). 


So Saturday morning, while still in our pajamas, we got sick of looking at the grossness and decided this carpet had to go.


And just like that, madness ensued.
We assumed there would be hardwood underneath because the rest of our house has hardwood, but we weren't sure what kind of condition it would be in.


Justin pulled all the carpeting up while I carried it out to our storage shed. Teamwork folks. 


We didn't take any pictures of how the flooring initially looked underneath because we got to work right away pulling out all those staples. 
That blue nonsense at the bottom of the stairs is me. I told you we did all this in our pj's. . . 


After several grueling hours of pulling out staples, this is what we were left with. (You'll have to ignore the tools scattered everywhere - this is real life people).


 The new view from the living room.

The landing on the stairs has these adorable small planks. I wish the rest of the flooring in our house was like this!


In the last photo you can see that we still have carpeting in our bedroom. Eventually we'd like to replace that carpeting, that's why we haven't finished off the edge. 


So now that the carpeting is up, we have to refinish the floor. We're thinking about staining the wood a darker tone. But since our whole house (except our bedroom) is hardwood, we'll probably start upstairs and then eventually work our way downstairs.  


But oh to have floors like this . . . 
A girl can dream, right?


So what projects have you been working on lately? Have you ever refinished hardwood flooring? Any tips/advice?


ps: image from here

35 comments:

  1. Looks gorgeous! You are so lucky to have hardwoods under there. Our house had almost exactly the same before pictures....but we had to settle for the most hard-core steam cleaning we could get. Ahh, to someday flooring!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @ Shellie - We tried steam cleaning and those stains still wouldn't come out. Kinda grossed me out a bit. So we're very fortunate there was hardwood underneath :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. We'll be refinishing the hardwood flooring in the new house in about a month! So hopefully you guys will go first and we can learn from you! ;) Lucky that you had hardwood flooring under there!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Ashley - Hopefully we finish our floors within the next month. I'll be sure to share what worked/didn't work with you!! :)

      Delete
  4. It looks sooo much better! I hope you do go darker with it, it would be absolutely gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Melanie - Yeah I think the darker wood would look much better, ours kinda has a reddish tone to it now which I'm not a fan of. But since our whole house is hardwood (except our bedroom and kitchen) we'll have to tackle it one floor at a time.

      Delete
  5. It's great how good the floors look after you pulled up the carpet! Good luck refinishing them (and I like the dark tones too!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Amanda - I was kinda surprised how good of a condition the floors were in . . we definitely got lucky with that one! Although they are quite squeaky, so we're trying to fix that issue.

      Delete
  6. You guys don't mess around! I'm such a fan of dark hardwoods, and that picture is gorgeous. Can't wait to see what you do!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Amy - I probably should have changed out of my pajamas though! And seriously, YOU don't mess around - i'm in awe over your entire house building process!

      Delete
  7. Wow! That is what we hoped for when we pulled back our carpet. Sadly it wasn't there. So we are left with carpeted stairs. Your's looks great though. I an cheering for the dark stain too.

    ReplyDelete
  8. How lucky are you to have hardwood floors hiding under that gross carpet?!? They look great and I also love the little planks at the stairs' landings. Are you going to go for wood floors in the bedroom or stick with carpet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Kristen - Yeah we're going to keep the carpet in our bedroom, but replace it eventually. Justin really likes having carpet in our bedroom so we compromised. :)

      Delete
  9. This looks great! We are thinking about doing this upstairs too, and when I say we, I mean me. My husband wants nothing to do with it. Lol but our floors might be in worse condition so I'm thinking of painting it, also my husband wants nothing to do with. Good job!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jen! Ohh painting the flooring . . . I like that idea! What color are you thinking? :)

      Delete
  10. Hi, thanks for stopping in on my blog! You are so lucky to have hardwood under that carpet!! It already looks so much better and it'll look even more amazing when you refinish it!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Getting rid of the carpet makes it look a million times better! We are currently doing the same thing in our house, but going very slow at it (we have only done the two smallest rooms in a month...).

    I vote for the dark stain as well! I love darker stained wood floors.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @ Debbie - The one bedroom you took the carpet out of looks sooo much better! :) I'm sure we'll move very slowly with the sanding & staining . ..

    ReplyDelete
  13. Jealous of that hardwood! We have gross carpet in most of our house. I made the mistake while rambling with a neighbor about how we can't wait to rip up all that gross carpet--and she looked horrified and told me the previous owners put it in a year ago. .... sorry? Hahaha.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Looks great!! I love the dark stain. We have super dark hardwoods and I love them.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Nice! I think hardwoods are gorgeous but I do prefer carpet only because of its cozy warmth. How lucky were you guys to have hardwood under that yucky carpet! I can't wait to see the floors refinished. I love the mocha color in the picture above! That's gorgeous!

    PS - Thanks for stopping by my blog :-)

    -Lindsey

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'd leave the wood alone. It looks like it's in great shape. And it's a super pain to refinish floors - that dust gets everywhere. But if you're going to refinish, you might think about using tung oil. Real Milk Paint company sells it (I've used it on woodworking projects and it looks great).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Don - Thanks so much for the advice! I love hearing tips from someone who has taken on these projects before. A family friend of ours who is a carpenter also recommended Tung Oil. We'll definitely look in to that! Thanks again :)

      Delete
  17. So we have hardwood underneath all of our carpet but I have no idea what kind of shape it's in, I want to rip it up so bad but I am so nervous. I love how you just woke up and started ripping up carpet, haha! The floors really look good - I'm afraid ours will be a total mess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ The Remodeled Life - Can you pry up an edge of the carpet to get a peek of what's beneath? We were able to pull ours up a little . . . I'd say go for it! ;)

      Delete
    2. We removed one room of carpet to check, then rolled our carpet back down until we were ready to work. In my parents' house, they checked all corners and edges only to discover the floor had been replaced in spots with plywood in the center!

      Delete
    3. I can't believe the center was replaced with plywood!

      Delete
    4. I think we will eventually go for it, once we get our courage up and pray we don't have plywood centers :). I think the floor is definitely going to need some work, just from what I can see from lifting up the sides but I'm so ready to ditch these carpets!

      Delete
    5. Yeah that's kinda how we felt . . we were nervous about what was underneath, but so ready for the carpet to be outta here. I guess we'll see how the sanding / staining goes . . . i'm dreading all the dust that's for sure! I'll say a special prayer that you don't have plywood centers :)

      Delete
  18. Oh gosh! Our carpet was nasttttyyy when we moved in. I couldn't wait to rip it up! We too did it randomly one day but it kicked us into gear. We didn't do it ourselves because of the fumes and the fact that our floors were in rough shape. 3 layers of carpet staples to remove and a lot of stains/aging but our floors are original so it was worth it. It doesn't look brand new and I would definitely recommend staining and sanding for the most even color. It was nice though to have the floors sparkling in under 3 days without any work from us! Our price was around $500-600 which was definitely worth it for not doing it ourselves.
    http://seventhandw.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/hello-new-floors/
    None of the companies I got quotes from suggested staining and I think a dark color would have made it look a lot better/even. We did Pergo in a color similar to your style photo upstairs and we really love that. Hopefully we have hardwood under our kitchen but we're not in a rush to redo that area!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think we'd be able to swing the payment to have someone do it for us - even though that'd be awesome! We'll probably just end up taking off work one day and staining and then heading to the in-laws or something for the weekend to avoid the fumes. I am sooo not looking forward to all that dust though!

      Delete
  19. Wow! Can't believe anyone would carpet over that--it's in good shape! We refinished the floor in our bedroom and will do the rest probably...it wasn't necessarily hard, just time-consuming at stages. Definitely rent a floor sander if you decide to go for it!

    Here's our step-by-step:
    http://his-and-hers-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/houston-we-have-dark-walnut-bedroom.html

    ReplyDelete