Day 600: Something Old, Something New

If anyone recalls the rabbit hole that I laid out a while back, you may remember that it didn't take many steps for the kitchen reno to spill over to the living and dining room portion of the main level. You got a glimpse of that spillage in the previous post with a sneak peek of the floor progress. But let's start at the beginning.

On the kitchen side of things, the vinyl floor originally in place was pulled up during the gut job back in the winter.We did find hardwood underneath but it was in pretty rough shape. There were sections so warped a marble could roll at significant speed, embedded nails, and parts that were simply cut out with perpendicular boards used to fill it in.

So as much as we would have loved to refinish it, we resigned ourselves to the fact that it would be a new floor going into the kitchen.

In theory, we could have just done the kitchen floor and called it a day. But that would be too easy, right? The main thing to think about was the transition from kitchen to dining/living room. What had been a doorway with carpet in the dining room transitioning to vinyl was now a 4' wide gap between the peninsula and the end of the wall. With such a big opening, it just made sense to consider the whole main level at once.

First step: figure out what we're working with. We pulled up a portion of the carpet and underlay and found (surprise, surprise) more vinyl. Thankfully, the vinyl was glued on plywood boards and under that, we found some nice oak hardwood is pretty great shape! Yay!

Hardwood peeks out under carpet and underlay

Speckled vinyl and original hardwood!

The plywood had been simply attached with regular nails, which made them a cinch to pull up compared to the ring nails we spent hours on upstairs back in the early days.

With this nice clean slate of original hardwood in good condition, it would be a shame not to keep it and just breathe some new life into it. So we decided to get new unfinished oak in the kitchen, alcove and entry foyer and then have the flooring contractor finish it on site at same time as the old floor in the living and dining room was re-finished. Since they were both red oak and both getting stained, they would look fairly seamless but for the height difference. For the new stuff in the kitchen, we had a choice between 3/4" (the regular height of new hardwood flooring) or 3/8" (to match the existing old hardwood in the living/dining area). We went with the 3/4" for durability and, if memory serves, the 3/8" may have been more expensive too because it's harder to come by. In the end, the small transition is not very noticeable so we're pleased with the decision to go with the hardier, thicker boards. But I'm getting ahead of myself - because there was one big decision we had to make that I haven't mentioned yet.

What do we do about these half walls?

We're pretty sure there were originally French door here because it looks like there are hinge gaps filled in on what would be door jambs. The walls definitely weren't structural so we had the option to take them out and fill in that floor space. On the one hand, it's nice to have a formal separation to distinguish living room from dining room. On the other hand, it might also be nice to open up the space even more and have some flexibility with furniture placement.

In the end, we decided to go with a total blank slate and take out the half walls. It was a pretty simple job and ended up being just about the last thing we knocked off of the to-do list, other than moving all furniture upstairs, before heading off to New Brunswick for a couple weeks.

Goodbye half walls

Lath and plaster coming off like a charm

Here's the blank slate we left for the flooring folks before taking off.

Our choice of stain on the left. The middle ground of not too dark or light or orange-y or brown-y.

And this is what we came home to.

Seamless from the kitchen to front door

Newly opened up living and dining room area

These two are probably the most representative in terms of colour and grain

Despite being in generally great shape, there were some gaping holes in the old floor in addition to the gaps left by the half walls. The flooring folks did a great job of filling in the holes with matching 3/8" boards and cut in a full perpendicular strip along the line where the half walls were.

New perpendicular strip acts like a subtle "wall"

Close up of the transition from old floor (left) to new floor

I'm glad we were able to arrange for this to be done while we were gone so the top coat had time to cure while we were out. And with a nice level floor in the kitchen, we could now move on to the the wallet destroyer of kitchen renovations - aka The Cabinets.