Floors

This old house....

We love old homes and the character that was built into them that has lasted for over 100 years.  In the case of our kitchen and dinning room floors though, the cracks, soft spots, and nails that were starting to poke through (not to mention the choice of tiles) were adding a "character" that we were not to keen on.

So a few weekends ago, after arranging with the landlord to pay for the materials and labor, Erik took to replacing both floors.  They proved to be more difficult that anticipated and he uncovered some interesting surprises, but all in all, the improvement was well worth the effort.

This was the kitchen floor beforehand.

The layer beneath the underlayment was a true hack-job.  A piece-meal of wood, it explained why the tiles were starting to deteriorate.  

Then the subfloor under that was in shambles from years of water damage.

So after ripping up three layers, Patrick (a colleague from PCMS who helped for the day) and Erik repaired a large section of the subfloor...

...put down a new "second" subfloor...

...then the underlayment, and finally the tiles.

Wren approved.  We're smiling too because we literally finished the job the same weekend she started crawling.  Good timing!  :)

The dining room floor was tackled two weeks later.

While a more straight-forward job, it did require taking up the original wood floor underneath.  A shame, really, because if it weren't for water damage (again!), we would have loved to refinished it instead.

The new underlayment.

The finished dining room floor (with a fresh coat of paint too!)

The finished kitchen floor.  

Now all we need is to do is paint this room.  We aren't big fans of the dark red, but as they say...we're just renting.  :)