The floors

The buried treasure, our now crisp, clean floor boards

The stair risers will be painted white

The stain swatches, we prefer the one to the left

Oh happy day! The floors are being sanded.

I am constantly amazed at how with old houses, the beauty is in the subtraction. Under the dusty grey wall to wall carpet, under the thin post-war hardwood, under several decades of paint and grime: beautiful, rich, wooden treasure!

When you think of it, 10 months to erase almost 125 years of design missteps is small penance for the everlasting joy that these charm infused floors will bring us.

Miraculously, the whole process should be almost painless, or at least odor less. In our previous life, when we lived in the condo, new neighbours would invariably mean a week of headache and nausea inducing odors caused by atrociously toxic floor stain. But thankfully, the eco tsunami that has hit our collective consciousness has even managed to green an old landfill bastion like floor lacquer. So not only will we be able to sleep soundly, our conscience clear, in our own beds, we will also manage, at least this time any way, not to piss off the neighbours.

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Night Shift

Because our budget is so limited we have to do what ever we can to stretch it. This week that meant ripping out the narrow hardwood floor boards in order to expose the wide planks of the sub-floor below. This is the same flooring that we previously restored on the top story to spectacular results. It is a painfully frustrating and slow process, with three nights work only uncovering about a third of the surface. It is also the first project that has truly tested our resolve as the work could only start after we put the kids to bed. So each night last week after 8:30, we would grudgingly don our dusty work gear and armed with crowbars and hammers descend to the first floor. 

Although we've had a wet, cold summer so far, things had heated up considerably last week which caused us to work with both front doors open as well as all the windows. Despite the late hour, these open doors were all the invitation that our neighbours needed to pay a social call. Merv from down the street, who has been restoring his house since long before we moved in, stopped by with one of his helpers to compare notes. And Maradonna himself, a little unsteady from a few too many post hard-days-work libations made an appearance, sagely entering through the front door this time, and exuberantly shook Manu's hand, seemingly truly impressed by all the work that had been done since his last visit. 

As dirty and sticky and fed up as we were, this one man drunken cheering section spurred us on. And despite the sweat streaming down our noses and our terrible lack of visibility we kept on for several more hours that night, content in the knowledge that our hard work was really and truly paying off.

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