Work in progess

So here's the hallway after the carpet was removed. There's something on the floor here that we thought was linoleum, but someone on the Old House Web suggested it could be oil cloth, and I think they may be right.

At first we thought we'd have to refloor over this stuff, but it turns out it was held down with a water-soluable adhesive. So after much scrubbing, and some really foul-smelling adhesive and old paper, we unearthed the pine floors. We'll keep that scrap of the old flooring though. Just for fun.

All of the floors have been a lot of work. They weren't in the greatest of condition when we got the carpet out. There was an old paint border around the rooms that proved to be rather stubborn. But about a dozen trips to Home Depot and an incalculable amount of sandpaper and beer later, the floors are looking good. Here's before sanding:

Tonight we'll start polyurethane.

You can see here that John's demolished the hearth, and we found the original hearth stone underneath. Yes, the wood bricks are still there. They'll have to wait.

How about the inside?

Here's a few interior shots.

This is the downstairs hallway. Lots of work to be done here. Bad carpet, bad panelling, bad drop ceiling, bad stupid light fixture. Lovely radiator, though, and great curved wall. The detail work below the stairs is pretty nice, but we're not sure what we'll do with it. Probably strip it, but not sure how we'd refinish or paint it.

Here's the living room. Those bricks are very shiny wood. They'll eventually go away, as will the inappropriate black tile hearth. And whatever the hell that thing is above the windows.

These posts are all kind of out of order. Below I tell you about work we've already done, now I'm giving you images of what it looked like before. Give me a break, it's been a busy month. I've got work in progress photos to post but I think I need to go back and resize all of my images because they take 80 days to upload.

This is what the outside of the house looks like. Thought I'd finally post a pic of it.

Phase 1 - the floors

Working on a house is pretty time consuming. I had really intended to keep a really updated log of everything we're doing, but time has been short these days.

All of the horrible carpet was removed, and we decided to refinish the original pine floors in the living room and dining room. We encountered some resistant linoleum in the hallway, and contemplated just putting new flooring over it, but good taste has prevailed and we're going to do our best to strip the linoleum this weekend.

John has also demolished the highly inappropriate hearth that was constructed by the previous owner. She had built up a wood frame and put black ceramic tile on it. She did a decent job, but it just looked stupid next to the old mantle. Someday when I get around to posting pictures on here this will all make more sense.

The stairs are going to need some real work. We've got old adhesive to remove, and a small repair on a sinking step. We think we'll probably end up repainting the stairs themselves and getting a carpet runner for them, even though that's not my favorite look, but it would be easier for walking on and less noisy. And less paint stripping. The woodwork below the stairs, as well as the banister and the spindles, may be getting stripped, but we're not really thinking too much about that until we get these floors done.

The living room also has these stupid wood "brick" tiles on two walls that we'd like to remove. If I have my way, they'll be gone and the room painted before we move in, but we're down to 3 weeks so I bet that I'll be disappointed. We also have to repaint the original hearth stones on the first floor because they look pretty bad right now. And replace pretty much every exterior door on the house. And get a mailbox.