We started with a mix of 90 year old 2 inch top-nailed oak floors in the living room, cheap fir wood floors (probably subfloor?) in the downstairs bedroom, and 1990s quartersawn oak floors in the kitchen and family room. The goal was to tie it all together and match the newest floors. I love that hardwood floors last forever–like 100 years! Hardwood can be sanded and stained to give a new look as trends change. BUT, wow do they take a long time to put in compared to those fast laminate floors!

Of course nothing is simple. Once we demoed we found out that the newest floors were only 1/2 inch thick and now most quartersawn oak hardwood floors are 3/4 inch thick. This meant we had to install a little ramped transition from the 90s floors to the new rooms.

Not ideal, but not so bad. We also had a few wonky areas that were uncovered with demo. The laundry closet (that will no longer be a laundry closet) previously had linoleum, removing the built in bookshelf left a small rectangle of subfloor exposed, and a dead return air vent was now sitting in the middle of the walking path.

Our floor guys did a great job patching it up! We had just about enough old wood floor from demoing the mudroom to patch up the parts that needed the 1/2 inch floors. Then he was able to shave down a few new board as needed. It’s really pretty amazing what they can do with hardwood.

Laying the actual new wood floors in the living room and bedroom only took a couple days, patching took a couple of days. Then the floors have to “acclimate” for a few weeks before finishing them. After the acclimation period, they sand it all down.

Then comes the stain. I liked the color we had before. I think it was “Antique Brown”. He did some test squares for me comparing Antique Brown with Medium Brown. For the life of me, I cannot tell the difference. He thought Medium Brown matched our old dining room floors best so we went with that!

Finally 3 (THREE!) coats of polyurethane to seal the deal.