Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Hand-Scraped Wood Floors, 5 Years Later



Reading today about another blogger's dilemma over replacing her old wood floors (here) reminded me of when we were in the same situation back in November 2012. 
On New Year's Eve Day 2010, we bought a brand new house that wasn't quite finished. The builder had decided not to put the wood floors in that he had planned, but dropped the price by $30,000 That's when we said sold!
We lived with ugly, half-assed stained cement floors for almost 2 years before we found exactly the wood floors we wanted. Here's what the ugly concrete floors looked like...


Our wood floors are hand-scraped and stained a medium dark color,  a sort of chestnut, but has a lot of variation in it. It took 5 days for 4 guys to complete the job from start to finish. 
The bare wood sat in our house for a few days to acclimate to the house conditions. This stack was in our breakfast room.
The bare wood was laid down in the great room (where I'm standing taking the photo), dining room (the room to the right), office nook (the hallway to the left leads down to it), entryway and other hallways before being hand-finished...

The wood guys did a sample for us. They hand-scraped the wood in two variations. The left is lightly scraped, the right is scraped a lot more. We chose the right, highly scraped one. The stain, on both samples, is exactly the same...

Next the hand-scraping started and went on and on...
The wood guys covered all the granite and vacuumed a lot to keep any dust down. We had already put travertine tiles in the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room. 

Sorry for the awful pictures. I took these back in 2012 with a point and shoot camera and all the lights were blaring to provide light for the work going on.
Stain went on in several different layers--stain, sand, stain, sand. This was probably taken about halfway through the staining as the finished stain is a lot darker.

This picture shows off the hand-scraping, but the color is a lot redder looking than it actually is...
Here's a more accurate depiction of the floor colors. I love the variation of the wood and stain...
We absolutely love the rough hand-scraping and would do it all over again! The only thing we would change is that we would have continued the wood floors into the master bedroom instead of putting carpeting in there.

In fact, we plan to replace the bedroom carpet with the same wood flooring as soon as that carpeting wears out. 

The wood floors were really reasonably priced. The price difference between putting in the hand-scraped wood floors in the master bedroom, or the high-quality rug padding and carpeting we did put in, was only about $400. We should have gone for the wood in the bedroom!

We took our sweet time moving all our furniture back into the house. We really loved the expansive look of the house without the furniture hiding our new floors...
My biggest concern was cleaning wood floors. I had never had wood floors and knew that carpeting was easy...just vacuum it. But how do you clean wood floors? 

Well, after almost 5 years of wood floors, I can tell you we just vacuum them! We use the vacuum hose to go into the corners and along the baseboards. If something spills, we wipe it up. Unlike the carpets, spills don't stain our wood floors. 

If you're considering replacing your floors with wood in the future, I hope this post helps with your dilemma.



Thanks for dropping by!



Joining the party here:
Foodie Friday And Everything Else at Rattlebridge Farm
Vintage Charm Party at My Thrift Store Addiction
Friday Favorites at Under A Texas Sky





18 comments:

  1. My hardwood floors are all very old and were last refinished decades ago when we first purchased the house. They are thin so it can't be done again...but, they are still lovely and so easy to care for. I feel so fortunate to have them as I really don't like carpeting. I clean mine a couple of times a year by hand-washing with warm water - no additional cleaning agents. It removes the surface dirt and doesn't destroy the shine.



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    1. I think you're right to just use water. My sister had a cleaning woman who used vinegar in the water and it darn near ruined her wood floors. My son in law uses a dust mop and Bono (spelling wrong?) sprayed on it. Like you, sometimes I will damp mop the wood with a damp cloth, but I get down on the floor. Sometimes I can't get up (LOL) but that's another story!

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  2. We've had wooden floors for ages. Like you say, they can't be stained like carpets can. How cool is that?

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  3. I would love a wooden floor, but cannot persuade my husband! Glad yours works well for you!

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  4. They're beautiful. Our lower level had cherry wood floors in most areas. We pulled out the carpet in the master bedroom and bathroom--can't believe they put carpet there-- and put in hardwoods in the bedroom and tile in the bathroom. Too hot and sticky to have carpet here.

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  5. Your floors are just gorgeous with a time worn quality that gives them so much character!

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    1. Thanks Mary. The house is built to look old and we think the floors fit in perfectly.

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  6. I'm with you on the whole wood floor thing. We had a flood in the main part of our first floor so the tile (which wasn't bad) had to be replaced. We opted for wide planked laminate flooring and it looks fabulous and is easy to clean. Your floors are gorgeous!
    xo Kathleen|Our Hopeful Home

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  7. I agree your floors are great and clean easy, my old house built in 1958 has all hardwood floors, except in 2003 I had laminate put in my kitchen to match my hardwood colors and it's all wonderful for cleaning which I need to do now LOL

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  8. I want to remove the carpet in our house and have wood floors to as I feel they are much easier to care for.

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  9. Gorgeous. We have tile. It's pretty easy to keep clean too.

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  10. I have a Roomba and I set it off every morning. Easy peasy!

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  11. I love the hand-scraped look and I LOVE wood floors. I felt the same way about our bedroom...we should have just continued with the wood floors---duh....When we close I think that is what the new owner will do. xo Diana

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  12. Your floors are beautiful. Thanks for sharing @ Vintage Charm!

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  13. We have wooden floor and about 15 year ago we had the downstairs sanded and polied...no stain..Upstairs during the remodel we uncovered the 90 year old wood flooring...with the remodel having gone so bad I'm thinking of painting them white! I know terrible but I don't see us getting the money to spend 5grand when we have so much else to do...I tried of looking at unfinished flooring.. Your floor are beautiful!

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  14. Your wood floor looks wonderful! I love the variation of colours wood offers.

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  15. These floors are so beautiful and so are your kitchen cabinets! I'm in love......x K

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