Creep…NO MORE!
The maple flooring in the kitchen is done! SQUEE!!!!!!!!
Working with The Other Justin, we came up with an elegant solution to a vital question: how to have wood meet brick hearth? Note, too, how the maple edge boards have a nice route detail adjacent to the hearth. Keeping the brick hearth exposed seems vital in terms of historical value. Yet, it would have been easier to floor over it, and MUCH better in terms of cleaning, etc. In short, protecting history will make my life just a tiny bit harder in the long run. Luckily, I am happy to pay this price.
So…floor done.
My excitement?
Great.
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This looks fabulous Ross. Your excitement is wonderful.
Oh, so clean and smooth! It is sublime. 🌻
Looks great!
Will you restore the holes in the bricks in the hearth? I know you have plans for there that will cover the holes up, so maybe it doesn’t matter…
Do you think you could raise the hearth? In my vernacular house, much less sophisticated than the Cross House, every brick hearth is a “floating hearth”. I.e., it is a wooden box constructed in the floor framing, filled with sand, and the unmortared bricks sit on the sand. I didn’t know this when I first bought my house, and came home to find that a German student staying with me, offended by the irregularity of the hearth in his bedroom, pulled up all the bricks, added sand, and relaid them. Ordnung muß sein!
This is the most German thing ever (says the person whose middle name is Haselhuhn).
I would so think over and over reconsidering every hole I potentially planned to put in that floor it is so beautiful.
The bricks on the wall behind the hearth are painted and painted and… any left natural? Will they be left to display history or be stripped as much as possible?
Have you decided on what kind of a finish to put on the floors?
Wow, the floor makes such a huge difference! It’s beautiful.
It looks incredible! Can I borrow Justin? I’m still impressed that he managed to lift the radiator and floor underneath it.
Question, and this might be stupid: Why did you decide to do the floor before doing the walls? Wouldn’t it have been easier to restore them without having to worry about messing up the awesome floor?
The floor is beautiful. If it is not possible to raise the hearth as John suggested, how about making a temporary cover to lay over the bricks so the floor is level all the way to the wall/fire box? That way it would make it easy for today’s needs, but it could be easily reversed.
I’m so jealous of your floors. I wish I had done them in the beginning of my reno and everyone told me to do them last. So, that means another year before I can get them done.
Wow, those floors are fabulous. I’m going to have a lot of questions for you when I see you next, because I want to pull up the wall-to-wall carpet on my first floor, refinish my maple floors, and install maple flooring in the kitchen. We currently have carpet, and it is beyond hideous.
The kitchen floor is amazing!
Will the maple flooring have a finish to retain the beauty of the wood?
Kitchen floor looks sublime.
I agree, Sandra! Amazing!
I’d love to do an 1890s finish: amber shellac and then wax.
But after researching this, it would be a maintenance nightmare.
So…poly it will be.
Yes!
Poly would be the best for sanity …😆
Have you thought about oil, or a hard wax oil on the floor (I think this is fairly traditional in the UK) scratches can be repaired easily with a light spot sanding, and a little more oil applied rather having to completely sand and refinish the whole floor, as with poly.
It is absolutely beautiful!!
I think I’d have a piece of clear, removable plexiglas cut to size and placed over the brick hearth. Easy to clean, easy to remove, shows the original brick, and wouldn’t hurt the historical narrative.
i love it! The other justin is a wizard.
What if you used super thick plexiglas to fill in the hearth? (we use it all the time at work) Then you could still see the
bricks, but the maintenance wouldn’t be a nightmare.
The maple floor is beautiful, such a difference it makes.