Home progress
Aug 24, 2002 The Story of My Life
I got home from my sister’s yesterday (have I mentioned how much I adore my sister? she’s a big mouth like me) and I saw my father-in-law’s van in the driveway. I went inside and found to my delight that he was painting the hallway for us. An hour later, my mother-in-law pulled up and came in to do the detailing around the molding. They’ve done most of the painting work for us; aren’t they grand? I complain about my inlaws now and then (who doesn’t?) but really we get along and I like them very much. I just don’t like their religious orientation, which I wouldn’t *care* about if I wasn’t worried about them getting to Noah with it.
Anyway, back to their laudable kindnesses. They also pulled up the carpet and cut it into manageable pieces for disposal. Brett was home by then, too. The wood floors are more disgusting than I thought with giant, black, stinky stains all over it. Now we know what the subtle smell is around here. Now we know why the realtor had vanilla Glade plug-ins all over the place when they showed us the house.
We’re going to mop with vinegar and water but my understanding is that when it comes to ancient pet stains on a wood floor, you’re screwed. At least the filthy carpet and underpad are gone; that’s sure to make a difference.
What’s amazing is that Peanut the Wondermutt has never, ever peed in the house even though we got her when she was 2 months old. I love that dog.
August 26th, 2002 at 10:50 am
I don’t know what you were planning to do (or have done) to the floor, but the house I moved into last fall had pet-stained floors.
The stains had not gone through carpet - the floors were just wood - so that might make a difference, but:
I hired a floor refinisher. It was d______d expensive, but worth it. He came in and sanded down all the floors (this was before I moved in), restained them with a darkish color, and sealed them.
The pet stains went bye-bye. I think the sanding was the trick - he sanded enough to get them out but not enough to really hurt the floors (this is an old, old house with good red oak floors).
Or, you could do like one of my colleagues and buy lots of throw rugs to cover them - if you don’t mind having throw rugs in odd places.
August 26th, 2002 at 12:14 pm
Actually they are here laying the carpet now!
We did look into having the floors sanded and refinished but this is what we found:
Older homes tend to do better because they used a different kind of finish. This is why my friend with the 100 year old home has beautiful floors but our house is only about 50 years old. Also, our floors are really light as is all the woodwork so staining dark would look incongruous. Finally, these are really old repeated stains (there is a black trail from one end of the room to the other) and it’s likely that they went through the floors completely meaning that we would actually have to replace about 1/3 to 1/2 of the floor making it out of our price range. We did have one friend who recommended that we paint the floors but I don’t particularly like the look.
More than you wanted to know, eh?
August 29th, 2002 at 12:18 am
i think painted wood floors are really nice.