In which the subfloor is revealed and minor surgery is performed
When we first unearthed the original floor, we knew paying someone to rip out the old floor and put in brand new hardwood would be the easiest and most expedient option. However, we decided that despite the extensive damage, we loved the idea of keeping the original (we assume) floors and restoring them back to a usable condition. Considering the 90 or so years of none-too-gentle use, obvious water damage, and multiple iterations of carpet installation and removal, we thought they were in pretty good shape and well worth the time and effort, not to mention the cost savings. It just felt wrong to have pristine floors in a house we bought for its historic charm.
One area of the floor that was in really bad shape was in the hallway in front of the red room. Many of the floorboards were split and several had large chunks missing out of them. I apparently forgot to take a picture of the area before I started excising the damaged wood, but here is what it looked like after I cut away the worst of it:
Initially, we had hoped to be able to buy some replacement strip flooring locally to use in the patch, but life is never that easy. Our floors are 2" wide, 3/8" thick (when new), T&G, and a mix of standard and quartersawn red oak, nailed through the tongue with finish nails. This product is easy enough to find online, but 2.25" x 1/2" was the closest I could find locally, and online, there were minimum orders that way exceeded what we needed. We tried the rebuilding center, hoping to find some red oak lumber of similar age and character, but we didn't have much luck and all the pieces we found would've taken too much work to mill. Same goes for the 2.25" x 1/2" flooring, I could've milled it into the size I needed, but it would've ended up way more work than it was worth.
I'm sure if I spent some more time on the phone, I might've found a supplier, but I decided to go ahead and make my own patch pieces, even though I knew the would cost significantly more per sqft. So off to the BORG I went. Strip flooring is a commodity and is priced accordingly, red oak lumber is much more expensive. I ended up purchasing 4 hobby boards (1/2" x 5" x 36") for a little less than $50. From each board, I was able to mill 2 strips of flooring. For those too lazy to do the math, that's 1 sqft of flooring per board, or $11.50/sqft. I sure wouldn't do an entire house like that, but it got the job done. I didn't bother milling in the tongue and groove, so I had significantly more wastage than I would've liked: all of that scrap eventually came in very handy for plugs and patches.
I used an oscillating multitool and ancient mini-circular saw to remove the old wood and chisels to clean up the edges where I cut in the middle of a board: it would've been easier to remove the entire board and start with factory edge, but I didn't want to remove more than I had to.
Now is a good time to talk about the subfloor. It consists of 0.75" x 9" ship-lapped T&G softwood boards. It's not in the greatest shape, but unless we're ripping up the entire floor, it's what we're stuck with.
Before I stared weaving in the patch, I did my best to close up some of the gaps that didn't warrant full removal. I used cleat flooring nails through the side of the boards to hold them in place:
One area of the floor that was in really bad shape was in the hallway in front of the red room. Many of the floorboards were split and several had large chunks missing out of them. I apparently forgot to take a picture of the area before I started excising the damaged wood, but here is what it looked like after I cut away the worst of it:
Initially, we had hoped to be able to buy some replacement strip flooring locally to use in the patch, but life is never that easy. Our floors are 2" wide, 3/8" thick (when new), T&G, and a mix of standard and quartersawn red oak, nailed through the tongue with finish nails. This product is easy enough to find online, but 2.25" x 1/2" was the closest I could find locally, and online, there were minimum orders that way exceeded what we needed. We tried the rebuilding center, hoping to find some red oak lumber of similar age and character, but we didn't have much luck and all the pieces we found would've taken too much work to mill. Same goes for the 2.25" x 1/2" flooring, I could've milled it into the size I needed, but it would've ended up way more work than it was worth.
I'm sure if I spent some more time on the phone, I might've found a supplier, but I decided to go ahead and make my own patch pieces, even though I knew the would cost significantly more per sqft. So off to the BORG I went. Strip flooring is a commodity and is priced accordingly, red oak lumber is much more expensive. I ended up purchasing 4 hobby boards (1/2" x 5" x 36") for a little less than $50. From each board, I was able to mill 2 strips of flooring. For those too lazy to do the math, that's 1 sqft of flooring per board, or $11.50/sqft. I sure wouldn't do an entire house like that, but it got the job done. I didn't bother milling in the tongue and groove, so I had significantly more wastage than I would've liked: all of that scrap eventually came in very handy for plugs and patches.
I used an oscillating multitool and ancient mini-circular saw to remove the old wood and chisels to clean up the edges where I cut in the middle of a board: it would've been easier to remove the entire board and start with factory edge, but I didn't want to remove more than I had to.Now is a good time to talk about the subfloor. It consists of 0.75" x 9" ship-lapped T&G softwood boards. It's not in the greatest shape, but unless we're ripping up the entire floor, it's what we're stuck with.
Before I stared weaving in the patch, I did my best to close up some of the gaps that didn't warrant full removal. I used cleat flooring nails through the side of the boards to hold them in place:
It took a few (read many) trips to the table saw, but I got all the pieces to fit as well as they could. (I suspect that the entire house is bowing out a little, which is why there are such large gaps between boards) before securing the patch, I first laid down a piece of kraft paper in the hole to prevent the glue from sticking he flooring to the subfloor. I used an electric brad nailer (18 ga) to nail through the sides at an angle when possible and through the face for where side-nailing wasn't possible. I applied wood glue to the edges of the boards to help hold the patch together since they lack tongue and grooves.
The final result looks like this:
It's a full on floor restoration job, whoo hoo! This is great documentation by the way.
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