We've wondered about how we were going to do the floors since the beginning and have bounced around just about every possibility once or twice. We didn't have enough of any specific lumber to do the entire place in one variety of wood. We definitely could not afford to purchase flooring or have it installed professionally. We finally decided to use a combination of the old and new oak, but I kept dragging my feet about starting the project for as long as I could. After the cabinets were done it was logically the next project to begin, but I hesitated another couple weeks or so because Christmas was the following week and I didn't want to have the place a wreck when family and friends would come for the first Christmas in the farmhouse.

But the holidays came and went and we had brought all the new oak back from the greenhouse and had it sorted and ready on the porches.



We tacked a layer of rosin paper down on the floor and had the momentous occasion of laying the first piece of flooring. Once the train started moving it would not stop. The creative juices started flowing and we began working our way across the kitchen/living room towards the stairs. We expressed our creativity with splashes of the old recycled oak tongue and groove flooring used for the doorway threshold, around the stair landing and as a frame around the fireplace hearth.

Every piece of the new lumber had to be planed, ripped, and cut to fit into is new home. There were several that didn't want to cooperative and had to be pried into position, but we finally made it all the way across the house and couldn't believe our eyes.

We used all old Oak barn lumber for the stairs and balcony floors. We used the planer and took off the gray weathered look and brought it to life once again. It became a beautiful contrast to the new oak wood flooring below and added depth and color.

After covering all the windows and cabinets with plastic, we rented a floor sander and made some dust. We also used a belt sander and smoothed out some of the rough edges and spent four days smoothing and finishing the floors. We saved a lot of the fine saw dust to be used to fill the screw holes and cleaned all the floors in preparation for the first coat of polyurethane. We filled all the holes and large cracks with the dust and used poly as the glue. The floors drank about three coats of satin polyurethane.

When we were finally finished, Sharon moved the rocking chairs back in and we were rocking and smiling and rocking and smiling and she looked over at me and said "... see honey that wasn't that bad now was it..... ". She didn't pause but a few seconds to follow it with " So when are we going to start building all those interior doors?" No rest for the weary. :-)