New Old Floor, Part I

We've decided to keep the original redwood floor in the kitchen.

You'll recall that this was the "three-floor floor." There was a layer of tile, a layer of new wood, and a layer linoleum all stacked over the original wood floor. Kathy stripped all of that off, dropping the floor level by a good inch. At bottom are once-nice redwood planks. Against the polite urging of our contractor, we've decided to sand and finish the wood rather than tile it over.

When I say "we" I mean "somebody else."

Today the somebody else arrived, and he wept in despair. Not really, but it wasn't 10 minutes before he was on his cell phone whispering to our contractor, "this is gonna take longer than you said."

Part of the trick is going to be replacing two long planks right in the center of the room. These were carefully pulled up and set aside -- and promptly lost. They were removed to plumb the island in the middle of the room. We could replace them with new redwood, but the color won't match.

Instead, the plan is to carefully pull up two different planks, and not lose them. If we pull up wood from under the cabinets we'll never see them. Those can be replaced with new boards, using the old boards to repair the center of the room.

We'll let you know how it goes.