They Gleam

We had our floors refinished this week. This is huge. Huge huge huge. For one thing, when we scheduled the work with the floor guy, he said we’d be able to get back into the house on Thursday, so we made plans to repaint our living room on Thursday since Andrew serendipitously already had that day off. Today was Thursday. Do you know what we did today? We painted the living room! Because the floors were finished when he said they would be! It went perfectly smoothly! I’m still reeling a bit from the shock of it.

For another thing, I thought that refinishing the floors was at least a year or two away because of the expense and logisitics, but it was something that I dreamed about doing because our floors were terrible. No, they were terrible. No, no, you don’t have to be polite. They were TERRIBLE. Look:

Dining room


Living room


Landing


Kids' room


Our room


Where they put down the can of popcorn ceiling stuff

When we bought the house at the peak of the market, we were young and stupid and thought, “Oh, we can fix that!” about a lot of things. And while we have, in fact, fixed quite a lot of things, it is taking a lot longer and requiring a lot more dollars than we ever imagined it would. And when we tore up the (disgusting) rugs in the upstairs apartment, we discovered that what appeared to be finished-if-damaged hardwood was actually only finished around the edges of the living and dining rooms, and the middle of these rooms was unfinished pine, because why bother finishing boards that are only going to be covered by a rug, sayeth early-20^th-century builders. Later owners apparently sayeth the same about protecting the wood while painting and applying popcorn ceiling. What is the point, really, if you’re just going to put down wall-to-wall, right?

So. That is what we were dealing with. And it was fine, whatever. You get used to stuff. It was unpleasant, and it was hard to clean under the dresser in our bedroom where the popcorn ceiling detritus basically acted as Velcro to dust, and there were hug e gaps between the pine boards into which the children could insert quarters, and spilling anything wet on the unfinished part of the floor meant that that beverage was absorbed into the wood forever, but, honestly, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. First of all, despite how terrible the floors were once we tore up the rugs, they were better than the RUGS were, because, Lord, those rugs were nasty. There was a CRUNCHY spot in the bedroom. So, yes, I hated the floors, but floors are only a small part of life, you know?

But, man, I love our floors now.

Dining room


Living room


Landing


Kids' room


Our room


Where they put down the can of popcorn ceiling stuff