Harvesting Flooring

We have spent lots of time harvesting flooring.  Hubby has a friend who had an old farm house that had flooring in it that is fir-just like what we have in the new house.  Our goal is to make the wood from the new house match and the addition match.

This is such a dirty job and at times I just feel completely gross when doing it.   Sure we could go buy the wood in town-or we could put in laminate but our budget is liking the free flooring and I refuse to put wood laminate in.  We have that in the kitchen in the house we’re living in now and it doesn’t last all that long.  Each and every floor in the new house will be fir flooring–no carpet–no laminate.  I have lived in so many houses with stained carpet or crappy floors and I’m not doing it again…Hard wood for me!

I thought I would share some pictures so you could see what it’s like.

Both of the houses that we’ve been working in have stuff in them.  We start by cleaning out a corner and then pulling up the carpet that’s covering the floors.  Hubby’s knees don’t bend so he does everything by laying on the floor.  I don’t know how he does it because it’s so gross and musty smelling.

After the carpet is up we start on removing the tack strips that were used to hold the carpet.  There is typically a few rows of staples that held down the padding for the carpet too.  All that has to be removed.

Getting started and doing the prep work is the hardest and most time consuming.

We never really know what type of or the condition of the flooring until we get the carpet up.  The room Hubby was in had floor boards that had never been sanded before.

The room adjacent had floor that look much like our floors at the house.

All of the wood is use-able.  Right now, plans are to put the not sanded boards in the kitchen where they will get more use.

From this stage, Hubby uses a hammer and crow bar to work the boards loose…then the boards come to me for nail removal.   I’m far from a pro at it but after three sessions of working with flooring, I definitely have a system down.

One more day and I think we’ll be done here-and I think we’ll have enough flooring for the whole addition.

Sunday gave us this amount.  If we bought it in town those really long boards would be about $15 each.  There is a stack of shorter boards behind the closed door too.

It was a long day but well worth it.  Just before we were about to leave and make our way home our daughter Kalissa called.  She had went to my house and kidnapped our dog Ruby.  She took her and Betsy for walk.  She told us to come to her house for supper and to get Ruby.  It was so nice to not have to cook after a long day. After supper we went home totally tired feeling really gross and in much need of a shower.  I was not excited about getting home as the breakfast dishes still needed attention.  But magically we walked into a clean house.  Kalissa and her boyfriend Craig had cleaned our house while we were away.  It was a wonderful end to a really good productive day.