Bye Bye, Carpet

Rebecca has wanted to get rid of the carpet in this house since... oh... before she bought it. A couple weeks ago, we finally felt motivated to action, in large part due to seeing the refinishing work of the folks over at Torley Manor. The plan: tear out the carpet, see exactly what was underneath, and then figure out what to do next. (We love plans that are easily condensed to Step 1: Do something irreversible, and Step 2: Figure out Step 3.) We knew the floor underneath was tongue and groove pine, since we could see its underside from the basement. The condition of the pine, however, was the big unknown. If the floor looked great, we’d sand and polyurethane. If it was unsandable (due to lead or some other gunk), we’d prime and paint. If it was really nasty, we’d probably put some sort of laminate floor on top.

It only took about four hours to go from a fully-furnished and carpeted living room to a room with a bare wooden floor. The newly uncovered floor is pine. We assume it’s the original floor in the house. Most of the floor has never been finished and is in pretty decent shape for being about 120 years old. Around the outside, there’s a few layers of paint, the most recent being brown. After a little research, I learned that the floor probably had a large, rectangular area rug in the middle, where the pine has never been finished.

We knew we could sand and polyurethane the unfinished central area of the floor, but what about the painted border? Could we also sand or strip that paint? Is it lead paint? To find out, I tracked down a lead test kit at a local paint store. (Thanks again to Emma and Q!) These kits contain eight little markers. Each marker has two glass vials inside that you crack open by squeezing the marker. Then, you shake to mix the chemicals and smear the stuff on potentially leaded paint. If it turns red, there’s lead. I decided to test two areas: the brown painted area and the bare wood. Why the bare wood? Well, I didn’t really know for sure that it had never had any finish on it. And I really don’t want lead poisoning. Really. So the test on the bare wood appeared negative. The test on the brown paint looked brown. Well, maybe reddish brown, but maybe just paint brown. I couldn’t tell what the test said about the brown paint. So I tried a third area that had white paint on top. That area tested clearly positive for lead. So we decided to paint the border and try to sand and put a clear finish in the center of the floor.

I'll post more later as the project progresses....