I love stripping!

Let's just discuss the original wood floors in the Craftsman's living room and dining room. When we bought the house the floors were covered with stinky, moldy, flea-infested carpet. At first we tried to save that gorgeous carpet....haha! Just kidding! We threw that crap out the first chance we got. (By the way, don't try to transport a truck-bed full of carpet without first tying it down. Bad, bad things happen when you're speeding down a busy four-lane street during rush hour.)

We were lucky in that the carpet was glued down so that there are no staples or tacks to remove. We were unlucky in that the carpet was glued down because we have to now remove glue.

So here's the deal-i-o. We're dying to keep the original floors because, well, they're original. How can you just throw something away that's withstood over 100 years of kids, pets, furniture, etc.? The floors are in good enough shape to keep, but in bad enough shape that we really can't use the big sanders to just sand them down and refinish. Instead, here's what we're doing:

1) Stripping off the glue (and spilled paint) with chemical stripper. Yes, this is tedious, messy, smelly, and kind of expensive.

2) We're then sanding the floors by hand. Yes, I said by hand.

3) Finally, in ten years we'll stain and finish the floors. :)

Pictures!

Aaron working hard:

Close-up:

1/3 how they originally looked, 1/3 stripped, 1/3 stripped and sanded:

You can see the remaining water damage here:

Stripping in the dining room: