There's Wood Under All That Paint

Renovating a house is always an adventure. We're just never sure what we'll find (or not find), so it's part of the process to figure out what we can use, re-use or what needs to be replaced.

Today's discovery: There is wood under all that paint on the floors! Okay, so we already knew that the wood was buried beneath the surface of chipping paint, but we were not aware of just how far down the paint goes. Sam had mused early on that he would prefer to keep the floors painted because the wood is so dark. Initially, I had agreed because the wood just seemed so incredibly dark, unnaturally so. After some pondering though, I really wanted to get a closer look because I couldn't imagine what sort of wood would've been used on the floors that would be naturally that dark.

So, today I took a small amount of sandpaper, wet down the area so as to not stir up the dust (I have no idea if any of it is lead-based paint or not, but I suspect that it is purely based on the fact that the house is around 85 years old) and got down to business. As it turns out there are several layers of paint on the floors. We already knew that there was a layer of white and green, but today I discovered that there are actually four layers of paint before we get to the wood.

The first coat of paint was gray, followed by the dark brown (that we'd thought was the actual wood), then green and finally white (which was then, of course, covered with various versions of carpet over the years). 

Whew, that's a lot of painting of floors! No wonder the former owner(s) ultimately just decided that carpet was easier. That tiny little sliver of wood showing through though gives me hope. We still don't know for sure if we'll try to remove all the paint and stain the floors or continue with the apparent tradition for the home, which was to paint the floors, but time will tell.

In other news, I really dislike the texture on the walls of the house (someone sprayed it at some point, which is a big bummer), so I had thought maybe I'd do a skim coat over all the walls before they get painted, but after playing with the plaster for a couple of days now, it is just far too time consuming for one person to do and we have so many other projects that have to get done that I can't justify the time cost at this point, so, sadly, the spray texture that I despise will be staying. I'm hoping once the walls are painted that it won't bother me so much, but it's a big disappointment at the moment. Apparently, I have an aversion to any wall texture though because Sam says I say the same thing every time we buy a house.

I've also been filling holes (I swear, it looks like someone took a push pin and just inserted it repeatedly all over the walls - and I don't entirely understand why) and trying to pick out paint colors (which is always a chore for me because there are too many choices). Sam has been shoring up holes in the fence so B-dog doesn't accidentally get out and ensuring deck boards are secure for now until we can take a better look at the whole structure -- plus, of course, going to work each day.

I will say, I'm already exhausted and we haven't really even got started on this big project yet, but hopefully, energy will find me again and we'll start getting all of the various projects done bit by bit.