This is just a short post to describe the floors and woodwork. In my previous house, in the city- which was one of the Craftsman type homes built in the 1917 to Twenties era, the woodwork and floors for even modest homes was beautiful. Generous dark English oak style appointments including coffered ceiling beams,built in bookcases and fireside bench and oak floors. That made the interior decorating! Good thing, since my furniture was early make-do. The upstairs had beautiful gum woodwork and the master bedroom had its own old ( non-working) gas fireplace- stylishly pretty, even if it was useless. The exterior was done in the revival Tudor style. I really liked that house…just not the neighborhood now there are some interesting stories!.
So we moved out to the country, into a plain old cobbled together farmhouse. Big enough for my growing family, but just short of condemning. Really…it was in bad shape. The floors were an interesting history ( some of which I wrote previously). After taking up the old vinyl flooring we found layers- sort of like the tells of cities, underneath. There was the twenty-era linoleum in what was probably once the back porch and later the kitchen, the oak floorboards of the thirties era maybe that covered the original wider pine boards. The pine board flooring was the original type to the old part of the house. It was painted, and some parts I went ahead and painted again, since the boards weren’t in the best of shape and that cuts down on splintering. We’ve had some monstrous splinters to extract from feet over the years (yes, we go barefoot alot- we’re country out here!).
In the dining room we refinished the floor and put down a polyurethane seal. In the living room we kept the old finish and I wax the floors and rent a buffer twice a year. I should do it probably another time- 3x a year, since the area around the wood stove sees a lot of wear. We had to order new windows over the years- had them made fairly economically and they match the old style. The trim work in the living room is pine, stained the color favored in the twenties- sort of a dark reddish varnished finish. I use Murphy Oil Soap and English Oil, but not as often as I did in the old house- I just don’t have the housework motivation, now. On the floors we use Paste wax and buff that out, on the polyurethane we get the recommended DuraSeal stuff. But I came across advice to clean polyurethane finished floors with a solution of 1 cup white vinegar to 3 cups warm water… I’ve got one of those industrial sized bottles of white vinegar around just for cleaning- I think it’s time I tried it. Sometimes old fashioned solutions are the best.
There is an interesting site, The Online Floor Store, that has lots of good input in a forum. Check it out for comments on your own flooring challenges. I found it really interesting.
Well, that’s it for this post- later:)
Technorati Tags: floors, woodwork
