Our Hardwood Floors: The Reveal

Last night we started moving furniture back into our dining and living room, and finally got our garage, workshop, and life back in order a bit. I'm so looking forward to having a functioning home again. We're dusting off every wall, windowsill, light fixture and counter surface, and trying to get tools put back in their rightful places. Our fridge is still in our mudroom, and our TV is not yet hung, so there is still lots of "moving back in" to do. But, I didn't want our slow pace of cleanup to delay me from finally showing you our floors.

After the floors were fully laid, here's how the home front was looking just after Jon finished sanding (vacuuming up remaining dust here). He sanded for about eleven hours, with four different grits of sand paper. Did you know it takes that many hours to sand a floor?

Immediately, the orange-ish pine trim around our windows

started sticking out like a soar thumb.

Add those to our project list.

We were overjoyed that they were finally all in place,

but we knew we wanted the tone to be a bit darker then their natural color.

So on went the sealer, and coat one of the water based poly finish.

We wanted as matte a finish as possible, 

and just as we hoped, the products we used helped to darken up the floors

and pull out the brown tones just a tad.

I haven't talked about our kitchen a whole ton, but I will. Someday.

It's in need of new light fixtures and lots of styling

(and yes, we've finally cleaned up the counters after taking this pic).

We had a few things going on this past week, what with work, a ceremony at Jon's department, doctor appointments, etc. so we stayed off of the floors for several more days giving them more time to dry and the sealer to harden further. Just to jog your memory, here's a look back at some before's again:

The real estate listing photos of the dining and living room, 

from about one year ago.

And then we moved in, and things looked like this for a while.

Dining room with our stuff parked there.

And finally, how it's all looking today.

Does it look like a different house? I hope so. That's kind of what we were going for.

In case you're considering a similar project, here are our floors by the numbers:
White Oak Character Grade Hardwood Flooring, 800 sq feet: $3,800.00
Plywood for subfloor: Approximately $600.00
Underlayment: Approximately $500.00
Bona Seal & Bona Traffic sealer and finishing system: $550.00
Miter Saw: $340.00
Floor Nailer: $250.00
Rental Sander: $80.00
Misc. supplies (Tack cloth, knee pads, etc.): $400.00
Misc. expenses (Including meals out, hotel room, additional gas): $250.00
Square Footage covered: Approximately 725-800 Square Feet
Days to complete: 12 days and nights of installation + 3 days of drying
Amount of fast/pre-packaged food consumed: far too much
Marital spats: 1 

It's estimated that we saved approximately $6,800+ by handling the demo, disposal of materials, install, sanding, and staining ourselves. That's about $6,800 that I desperately need to put towards new furnishings, so I'll take it.

We'll be taking a breather before we jump in to all of the finishing work that's to be done. Jon is in need of some fresh air (ie. time on his dirt bike) and some rest (ie. a few well deserved naps). There are baseboards to choose and install, walls to be patched and touched up, door trim to take care of, and now we have to figure out what to do with the too-orange-for-us window trim. So you might consider this a flooring progress post, instead of a full on reveal. It's already crazy for me to look back at the blue carpeting. I've already forgotten what it looked like.