A Milestone!

The flooring on the intermediate stair landing has new oak flooring! With this, all the flooring repairs to the second floor are done! (On the left wall, you can see how the landing was raised in 1929, covering over the 1894 wallpaper.)

 

The first two floors of the house had wall-to-wall carpeting originally, so random cheap pine was paid down. This was, it seems, replaced with oak during the circa-1929 apartment conversion.

However, because the landing was raised up, its original random pine was extant when I returned the landing to its original height in 2014. But now, at long last, the landing has oak flooring, too!

 

On the first floor, a hole was cut into the floor circa-1950 to create a staircase leading to new motel bedrooms in the basement. I removed the stair in 2014, and laid down plywood. Now this area, too, has oak flooring.

 

The Other Justin is waiting for maple flooring ordered for the kitchen to dry out a bit more before installing it.

I am breathless with anticipation.

 

 

21 Comments

  1. LS on April 17, 2021 at 7:45 pm

    Nice!! Can’t wait to see the area under the stairs completed. Bit by bit, but feels good every bit that gets checked off the list!

  2. Kerri on April 17, 2021 at 9:50 pm

    Congratulations on reaching another milestone! I love your staircase so much.
    What plans, if any, do you have for preserving at least a portion of the original
    wallpaper? It would be a shame to lose it entirely after being there for 125 years!

  3. Mona in MN on April 17, 2021 at 9:52 pm

    The floors are going to be GLORIOUS!

  4. Leigh on April 18, 2021 at 12:28 am

    Second floor’s flooring 100% done? The Other Justin delivers! Wheeeeeeeee

    • Ross on April 18, 2021 at 12:33 am

      Not done, Leigh! But all the repairs are now completed!

  5. JP on April 18, 2021 at 1:04 am

    I still find it crazy that the house originally had carpet! How many similar homes was this the situation for, do you think? Until yours, I had never heard of it before.

    • Ross on April 18, 2021 at 9:43 am

      JP, wall-to-wall was not uncommon in the 19th-century.

      Many rooms in the White House had it, and so did the 1832 Old Merchant’s House in NYC.

      At the time, the carpet would have been like 22-inch-wide strips, hand-sewn together on site.

      • Cindy Belanger on April 18, 2021 at 6:28 pm

        We have the original wall to wall carpet in our front & back parlor from 1896. You can see the strips where it was woven together. Awhile back we had a 90 year old nephew verify this was the same carpet he remembers when visiting the house, of course it would have been 30 years old by then. There was an article in the Kansas City Star in 1976 interviewing Lloyd Herring Jr. the son of the owner that had the carpet installed. The pattern is beautiful, and in pretty good shape for it’s age. Unfortunately, it has an allover dirty gray tint to it, which I’ve tried to clean, but no luck. We pamper the carpet, not sure how long it will last.

      • Leigh on April 19, 2021 at 1:42 am

        Hand-sewn heavy, large carpets? Such skills!

        • Cindy Belanger on April 20, 2021 at 9:20 pm

          I know, right? The patterns back then made on the looms were so beautiful. But I can just imagine the people sewing the carpet strips together on their hands & knees. My front & back parlor measures 36 feet altogether and there are 7 strips of carpet to be sewn. Talk about tedious.

          • Leigh on April 23, 2021 at 11:37 pm

            Takes a special skillset, Cindy Belanger.



    • Mike on April 19, 2021 at 8:30 am

      Our 1886 home apparently had wall to wall carpet in the principal first floor public rooms; the wood floors were never sealed, and look like the backside of the barn. The upstairs bedrooms were stained and varnished in about 2-3 feet in from the walls, indicating that large area rugs were used up there. We are still debating on whether to lay new hardwood in the downstairs, or find a patterned carpet similar to what may have been there originally. I tried sanding an area in the back parlor to see if they could be made to look nice, but 125 years have not been kind…plus, there is no subfloor under them and most of the rooms are over an unheated crawl space, so the floors would always be cold in the winter.

  6. Mark Colburn on April 18, 2021 at 6:00 am

    Curious as to why the kitchen is drying out?

    • Ross on April 18, 2021 at 9:45 am

      Mark, new maple was ordered for the kitchen floor. It needs to dry to X moisture content before being installed.

  7. Barb Sanford on April 18, 2021 at 12:00 pm

    The new flooring looks so good! And it will look even better when it’s finished.

    And I’m following all your photo posts even more carefully than usual. We’re getting ready to remodel our kitchen, and and I’m hoping to put down maple flooring to match the wood floors throughout the rest of the house. The kitchen would likely have had linoleum originally, but it currently has The World’s Most Hideous Carpet(TM). I can’t wait for it to be gone.

  8. Laurie L Weber on April 18, 2021 at 5:10 pm

    They are going to be so gorgeous! Hooray! 🙂

  9. Cindy Belanger on April 18, 2021 at 6:32 pm

    It must feel good to have all the repairs done on flooring on the second floor. When the maple flooring in the kitchen is installed it will make such a difference in the room. It will give you incentive to finish the kitchen in record time.

  10. Tony on April 18, 2021 at 10:10 pm

    Did I miss a post on the recreated railing spindles?

    • Ross on April 19, 2021 at 9:21 am

      No such post, Tony!

  11. Mike on April 19, 2021 at 8:37 am

    Are the stair treads as worn as they appear in your pictures? Especially those last few at the bottom…from here, it looks like they are also scarred. If so, do you plan on flipping them over? I know someone who did just that, and the stairs looked like new without having to use non-original parts.

    • Mike on April 19, 2021 at 8:39 am

      Also, I am looking forward to seeing the bench reinstalled there at the bottom, even if it does cover up part of your beautiful new floor 🙂

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