House WIN!

[Sibley]

I bought a house this year, and am doing various projects. This weekend, it was ripping up some smelly carpet. I knew that it was hardwood underneath, but had no idea about the condition. Pulled up the carpet & pad and started celebrating.

Pic after I've removed all the track strips, staples, and scrubbed. Cross your fingers that the living room looks the same, cause that carpet's going next.

[Valhalla]

Congrats!! This happened to a few friends of mine.  Removed carpet, found nice hard flooring underneath.  Gotta love it.

[SwordGuy]

Our second house had carpet in the hall and bedrooms upstairs when we bought it.   

But clever me, I pulled up the floor vents in the bedroom and peeked underneath the carpet to check the floor.

Score!  Hardwood floors!

 Bought the house and first thing we did was rip out the carpet in the bedrooms and hall. 

That's when I discovered that though the bedrooms had hardwood floors, the hall did not.  Just plywood.

I had an "unplanned flooring project" appear on my immediate honey-do list to fix that. :(

[ender]

I can't even imagine putting down carpet on such beautiful hardwood.

Y'all who did this in the 70s and 80s are crazy! :P

[NoVa]

Our house is an early 60s split level, when we bought it there was shag carpeting on the main floor and upstairs, covering beautiful oak floors that just needed sanding and finishing. Also full of dark, heavy furniture that made everything seem smaller that it actually was.

[SwordGuy]

I can't even imagine putting down carpet on such beautiful hardwood.

Y'all who did this in the 70s and 80s are crazy! :P

I think pretty much the same thing about women who cover their skin with tattoos. :)

Fashion is ephemeral and frequently makes no sense.

[Sibley]

Considering the damage the previous owner's kids did in general, I'm glad the carpet was there! The carpet had been peed on by their dog (and possibly kids, after the condition of the bathroom I put nothing past them) in multiple spots, thus the odor.

The living room carpet also smells bad, so I assume it has also been baptized. I also need to paint the ceiling, so the plan is to move everything off the carpet that I can, cover the rest, and paint the ceiling without worrying about drips on the carpet. Then I'll remove the carpet, tack strips, staples, and clean. Probably doing all this this week and next weekend. Cross your fingers.

[honeybbq]

Beautiful!!!

[soccerluvof4]

Very nice! I did not have such luck in the older home I bought and am slowly renovating. I am in the process of putting hardwoods in. So saved  ton! congrats

[Lookilu]

I can't even imagine putting down carpet on such beautiful hardwood.

Y'all who did this in the 70s and 80s are crazy! :P

I can't disagree with that, Ender, but I'm really glad that the oak floors in our mid1950s house were protected by carpet. Pulled out all the carpet, tack strips and about 7 gazillion staples and nails and now have beautiful hardwoods throughout. I will say that removing 30 year old carpet is a really gross and dirty job. It convinced me that I never want carpet again, ever.

[TabbyCat]

Beautiful! My dream was to find an old house with wood floors, but budget dictated otherwise so we're rocking some mid 90's carpet for now. Maybe next time.

[Threshkin]

Some friends of mine owned an old house in CT.  It had hardwood floors under that carpet, 3" pine.  Since pine is fairly soft it was kinda dinged up.  It still looked much better than the old ratty carpet though!

One day, on a whim, they decided to see what was under the pine boards.  Major win!  The old original floor was there, 18 to 24 inch wide oak boards!

After some research they determined that sometime around 1900 it was common to get rid of the "ugly, old fashioned" wide board floors and replace them with "modern" narrow board pine floors.  Apparently the homeowner at the time was too cheap to pull out the old floor and just put the pine on top.

Since the original floor significantly improved the historical significance of the late 1700s home the appraised value increased almost 50%.

[Louis XIV]

Since the original floor significantly improved the historical significance of the late 1700s home the appraised value increased almost 50%.

That sounds a bit extreme.. If its accurate,

Step 1: buy similar house in that area

Step 2: buy salvaged timber floorboards & install

Step 3: Achieve nearly 50% ROI with minimal renovation.

No one is getting a team of experts in to validate the historic integrity of old floor boards.

[Threshkin]

Since the original floor significantly improved the historical significance of the late 1700s home the appraised value increased almost 50%.

That sounds a bit extreme.. If its accurate,

Step 1: buy similar house in that area

Step 2: buy salvaged timber floorboards & install

Step 3: Achieve nearly 50% ROI with minimal renovation.

No one is getting a team of experts in to validate the historic integrity of old floor boards.

You would be surprised what level of validation gets involved when you are dealing with historic properties in New England.  Historical records searches, tree ring analysis, etc.  Authenticity is worth real money to the idle rich.  Fakers know this and the rich are very cautious of hoaxes.

[mm1970]

Our house had hardwood when we bought it (needed some patching).

It was built in the 40's, but we knew it had shag carpeting at some point.  How?

The two bedroom doors had a 1.5-2 inch (badly cut) gap between the bottom of the door and the floor.  Someone put in shag, cut the doors shorter, and put them back in.

We thought about trying to add more length to the doors. In the end, just bought new doors.

[skeeder]

Not all wood is worth the time, our old house had wood floors throughout, but they were shorts (about 18" long pieces), when we bought it it had new carpet in the bedrooms and that laminate board stuff through the rest.  After some quick math, I figured out it would cost way too much to pull the laminate and lower the moldings and fix the nail holes on top of restore the wood.

Sometimes it works out.  Ours really didn't.  But our current home has real wood floors! :)