EMHED, Phase one: Floors

As you may recall, every square inch of the hard wood floor in the house were covered with one or more layers of the of the following:
-Carpet, originally gray, now black in the high traffic and water damaged areas
-Plasticised cork
-Gray linoleum

We decided to use linseed oil (made from flax) on the floors rather than varnish because it's non-toxic, dries pretty fast, and won't show scratches from the dog's nails. We spent Wednesday, our first official day in the house since the owners finished moving out Tuesday, preparing the floors for the professional floor guy to come and start work Thursday.

We're in a bit of a rush to get the floors done and move in as Laura is coming to visit during her spring break which happens to start next weekend. We have a lot of work to do before then so that she doesn't have to live in a hectic mess when she arrives and decide to never visit us again.

The dog was allowed into the house for the first time on Wednesday. He ran around the house, checking everything out for about 30 seconds, then barfed on the carpet.

I couldn't really be mad at him because my first reaction to the interior was almost the same.

Living/Dining
The wood floors in some areas of the living/dining were having an allergic reaction to the carpet and had started to reject it in a few places.

The glue/padding will have to be sanded off by the floor guy so the floor still looks rather unspectacular at this point.
However, in a few places you can start to see the pattern of the floor peeking through. The floors in the living/dining are oak and the boards are set in a herring bone pattern. I can't wait to see the finished product!
Entrance, hallway, kitchen

The entrance, hallway, and kitchen had cork floors circa 1970ick (that is not a spelling mistake) and was two toned as the mat by the front door had permanently left it's mark.

When we started chipping it up we realized it was actually two layers of cork over a layer of plaster. The plaster was laid as protection and to keep the lines of the floor from peeking through the cork. In the hallway the plaster also had a layer of tar over it, probably to help protect from water damage should anything go wrong in the adjoining bathroom or kitchen. Over the plaster/tar was a layer of cork about a centimeter thick, secured with little nails.

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While cork isn't really my cup of tea, this was actually high quality material and I might have left it in either the entry or kitchen just to have some variety and because it's very durable. However, at some point the old owners decided that just one layer of cork wasn't enough so they glued on another layer of cork which was sandwiched between a layer of linoleum on the bottom and clear plastic on the top. UuuuUuuuuUuuugly.

It took a couple hours with a crow bar to get up all the cork and a further lifetime to find and remove all the little nails. The wood floors in the rest of the house are made of fir and set in a normal plank pattern.

(Apparently Ven still cannot envision the final product and is still so grossed out by the interior that he's trying to barf on the floor again.)

Bedrooms
We have all the furniture/kitchen appliances in the bedrooms at the moment so that the rest of the house is empty. On Sunday we will move the furniture to the living/dining and the floor guy will do the bedrooms rooms on Monday and Tuesday so they'll be dry by Thursday when we move most of our furniture in.
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It's a tight schedule but I think we can pull it off. Morten and I are taking off Thursday and Friday and are prepared to work through the night if necessary. I hope that Laura is jet lagged when she gets here Saturday afternoon so we can all take a nap together.

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I'll post some after pictures on Sunday when we get to look at and walk on the new floors.