If we were sane, we might have listened to the advice of our friends, who at several stages of the tear off said things like, “What I would do, is maybe look into some tile to cover this up.”  It was excellent advice.  I especially thought that as I nursed blisters on both hands from pulling staples. 

When we discovered a few months ago that there was hardwood floor underneath layers of linoleum and plywood, we were determined to scrape everything off of it and restore it, to honor the home and its history.

Well, that and we have no money allocated for tiling another 300 square feet in the house.

So we tore it all out to get back to the original hardwood floor.  It was there, hiding beneath layers of linoleum, thin plywood (complete with no less than 800,000 of the longest, most fragile staples ever installed), peel-and-stick linoleum tiles, and a quarter-inch thick layer of black, tar-like adhesive.

Kitchen floor peel-and-stick

Kitchen floor pieces

Adhesive remover

Adhesive remover part two

The best we could get it to look after scraping off the adhesive remover:

Scraping round one

800,000 Staples Removed

See the staple in the photo above?  I saw a hundred of them every time I closed my eyes for days.  Every time we thought we had finished pulling every single one out of an area, we would go back over the same area and find three more.

Scraping tar adhesive off the floor

Sanding round one

Sanding round eight

No fewer than five rounds of sanding.  We gummed up countless drum sander belts. 

Worth it

I love the discolored, damaged look to the wood. Staple holes, minor water damage, even a few holes patched with tin cans.  People pay big money for that “distressed” or “antiqued” finish. 

We just had to sweat and bleed a little.