A NEW Room

We found more hardwood floors!

As we were giving Mom and Dad a tour of the house, we were hyphothesizing what the room directly off to the kitchen might have been (a bedroom at one time since it had a closet, a dining area since it had linoleum flooring, and so on). (We're currently using it as a listening/music room). It has three doorways: one to the kitchen, one to the bedroom hallway area, and one to the den. It also had identical linoleum flooring to the kitchen, a set of built-in cabinets in what used to be an old closet, and a really large built-in desk and bookshelf system. Now, while we liked all of the storage, we hated the arrangement because the built-ins made it impossible to put any type of furniture in the room without making it impossible to walk through. Furthermore, we HATED the light-colored, faux wood paneling. Everything about the room was so neutral and light in color that it was just blah.

Dad posed the thought that we might have hardwood floors in the room since it wasn't part of the addition made in the 70s. Well, with that thought, Daniel immediately started peeling back layers of linoleum and subflooring, and sure enough, we had hardwood floors!


This was a major source of excitement because it meant we didn't have to wait until we redid the kitchen in order to work on this room (in order to redo all of the floors at the same time).

So while Mom and I painted, Daniel and Dad worked on pulling up the floor.

They began by pulling up the existing flooring.



This is the second layer of linoleum (which is covering the hardwoods). I really can't imagine covering up hardwood floors with this ugly stuff, but apparently (Mom tells me) it was quite the fashionable thing to do.

It did, however, leave Dad and Daniel with quite a challenge.

Thousands of staples covered the linoleum (attaching it to the subflooring before the most recent linoleum was added).

They kept at it though and began working the sides of the room to pull up the molding in order to reach the edges of the linoleum. It was at this point when we discovered yet another hidden gem in the room.


The ORIGINAL tongue and groove pine paneling! We were definitely shocked by this one-- fake wood paneling was covering real wood paneling!


In essence, we were uncovering the original house... but it was not without an intense amount of work.


Demolishing the built-ins

Both he and Dad pulled up staple after staple.

One tip they found online was to use a snow shovel as leverage in order to pull up the layers of linoleum and subflooring. Since we live in Charleston, the land of 50-degree winters, they don't even stock snow shovels, so Daniel had to make do with a regular shovel.


The room's transformation is absolutely amazing. It doesn't even begin to resemble what we started with. The condition of the walls and floors is pretty incredible as well. The floors will just need refinishing.

The walls will need a bit more work. We did make the surprise discovery of what used to be a very large window overlooking the backyard. With the addition of the bedroom and den on the back, the window was split, with one half to become a doorway and the other half to be covered by the fake paneling. We plan on keeping our eyes open for any remodeling projects that might be going on in the neighborhood (with the hope that maybe they'll be throwing out some of their paneling). We're also planning a trip to Charleston Building Materials and Salvage Yard to see if we can find replacement panels (we only need five).

It's definitely falling into place though!