Hardwoods Going Down(stairs)!

We’re ready for the installation of the hardwoods downstairs in our Young Victorian! And while it will take a total of 5 months to complete the task (given there are 6 rooms to work through in stages), we’ll go ahead and cover all of the downstairs wood flooring in one post, just to button-up the topic!

In case you missed it, or because I wrote the posts so long ago, you can go to this post to read about the flooring we chose. And you can go to this post on the first part of the process of laying the floors upstairs. And then go to this post to see how we finished-up the process of installing hardwoods upstairs. Otherwise, here’s a quick catch-up: the entire process involves laying out the wood, nailing down the wood, sanding the wood, and then oiling the wood (yes, oiling) for the final finish! We went into the downstairs flooring project with so much more confidence having the upstairs project completed and under our belts!

Rooms: Foyer, Kitchen, Office, Sitting, Dining, and Living

We started in the foyer and planned to work our way around the downstairs space, ending with the living room. All along, we were hoping and praying that the floors would join-up between the foyer and the living room just right (no open concept in this Victorian lady but we like it that way)! And here’s a teaser…Warren’s really good at keeping stuff lined up!

To Paint or Not To Paint (Before the Floors)

When we installed the hardwoods upstairs, we had already painted all of the rooms. It was a great debate about whether we paint first so we didn’t have to worry about protecting the new floor when we painted later, or paint after and take precautions to protect the freshly finished floors. Painting first won the upstairs debate, but we would learn…

Having to wipe down all of those freshly painted walls after sanding the floors was a bummer so “Flooring Round 2” (downstairs) went a different route and we laid the floors before painting for the most part. This was a much better solution for us: cover the floors, keep the painting tidy, and we’re good to go!

Protecting The Finished!

Given the upper rooms were all done by this point, and given we have a big wide-open foyer to the upstairs, we did have to come up with a plan for dust control during the sanding stage downstairs.

Enter Warren’s ingenious tenting of the upstairs solution! It worked perfectly and we still had a nice clean space upstairs to escape to each night! Sanding raw hardwoods makes lots and lots of dust, although nowhere near as much as drywall creates, yuk!

Here are some shots of the process in various rooms downstairs:

Meanwhile, Back at the Rest of the Renovation:

Again, the entire flooring project downstairs stretched on over the course of about 5 months. But there were lots of other projects going on during that same time. We systematically (cause that’s the only way I can handle doing things) worked our way around each room in a clockwise direction (of course) until we finished the living room in late October, 2016.

And yes, in the end Warren was able to marry the hardwoods between the living room and the foyer perfectly! No easy feat to keep the wood squared all the way around 1300 square feet, but he nailed it (literally)!

We’ll talk about painting those same rooms next time. Thanks for spending time with us reliving the renovation of our Young Victorian!

Blessings,
{Shelley}

P.S. **Disclaimer** We are not hardwood flooring installation experts. Please be sure to do your own research before attempting installation on your own or hire professionals! We also have no affiliation with Monocoat and were not compensated in any way for this “review” of their product (although that would have been lovely); we just love the product!