Please allow me to share a few universal, immutable Truths about the
wood flooring found in older homes.

When you hear the words "... and there's a wood floor under the carpet,"
what you should think is: " ... and the abused damaged ruined remnant of
a once-beautiful tongue and groove plainsawn oak floor lie beneath this
urine-stained berber."

Carpets are generally put on top of wood floors for a reason, and in my
experience -- this 50's ranch being my third, after two early 1890's
Vic's -- those reasons have a lot more to do with concealing/cheaply
covering up damage than it does with comfort, sound or any other very
plausible explanation.

In the my Vics, the carpeting was there to hide termite damage.
(Termites, btw, like nice tasty oak floor better than icksies pine
subfloor). In the case of my '50's ranch, it was to cover over a
profoundly flowerpot-water damaged floor.

It's also worth noting that some floors, even if not all that "damaged"
are basically ruined.

For example, in th case of my 50s ranch, in addition to several
pizza-sized water stains, when i pulled up the chihhuahua-pee stained
carpet this morning i found 4d or 5d nails -- facenailed into every
flooring strip, at every joist for a grand total of . . . 1500+
nails. The floor cannot be refinished in this condition, and it cannot
be simply patched, as every face nail needs to be removed before i can
sand, which effectively means every strip has to be pulled up.

Better to buy a whole new brace of 3/4" oak, given the prices of oak
today, plus it gives me a cheaper material to practice floor sanding on
than the maple i'll be installing later this year in another room.

I should hasten to point out that i'm far from upset, and I am
definitely not complaing or unhappy -- this gives me a great excuse for
MORE TOOLS, (like that excellent pneumatic cleat driver i saw at
Berland's) along with a great opportunity to level floor, which, had i
not needed to remove the old finish floor, i probably would not have
taken the time to do.

..max

--
the part of
was played by maxwell monningh 8-p

wrote:


Sorry to hear of your troubles, but those are not immutable truths. I
bought a 1950's ranch in 1995 from the original owners. It had wall to
wall carpet throughout, including inside all the closets. The carpet
was ancient and awful. Underneath it was a brand new 1952 oak floor
that had never been walked on other than to install the carpet. Back
in 1952, the houses in my neighborhood were built with oak floors as
standard, and wall to wall carpet as an extra cost option. If you went
for the carpet, they put it OVER the oak floor. When we had our
closing, we went straight over to the house and ripped up all of that
nasty carpet the same day. The floor underneath was in pristine
condition, and did not even need to be waxed. Not a mark on it.

Barney

i am going to make a very special voodoo doll out of my chihuahua-pee
carpet and name it Barney.

Congrats on the score -- that is most excellent.

..max

--
the part of
was played by maxwell monningh 8-p

immutable truth , ive seen carpets pulled out of maybe 30 houses most
80 yr old homes sorry youve had bad experiances but ive only seen ruined
kitchen floors. Maybe its the neighborhood

"Max" wrote in message
...
Please allow me to share a few universal, immutable Truths about the
wood flooring found in older homes.

i found 4d or 5d nails -- facenailed into every
flooring strip, at every joist for a grand total of . . . 1500+
nails. The floor cannot be refinished in this condition, and it cannot
be simply patched, as every face nail needs to be removed before i can
sand, which effectively means every strip has to be pulled up.

Bought my first house in 1966. It was built in 1948. Hardwood floors
covered with carpeting. Fashionable people that we were, we replaced it
with new wall to wall carpeting. Hey, there are a few squeaks in the floor,
but I can get rid of them ! ! !. Not as many as yours, but I put in maybe
50 nails or so. Then the carpeting covered it all.
Ed

wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:28:17 GMT, Max wrote:


Please allow me to share a few universal, immutable Truths about the
wood flooring found in older homes.

When you hear the words "... and there's a wood floor under the carpet,"
what you should think is: " ... and the abused damaged ruined remnant of
a once-beautiful tongue and groove plainsawn oak floor lie beneath this
urine-stained berber."

Carpets are generally put on top of wood floors for a reason, and in my
experience -- this 50's ranch being my third, after two early 1890's
Vic's -- those reasons have a lot more to do with concealing/cheaply
covering up damage than it does with comfort, sound or any other very
plausible explanation.



Sorry to hear of your troubles, but those are not immutable truths. I
bought a 1950's ranch in 1995 from the original owners. It had wall to
wall carpet throughout, including inside all the closets. The carpet
was ancient and awful. Underneath it was a brand new 1952 oak floor
that had never been walked on other than to install the carpet. Back
in 1952, the houses in my neighborhood were built with oak floors as
standard, and wall to wall carpet as an extra cost option. If you went
for the carpet, they put it OVER the oak floor. When we had our
closing, we went straight over to the house and ripped up all of that
nasty carpet the same day. The floor underneath was in pristine
condition, and did not even need to be waxed. Not a mark on it.

Barney

SAme experience for me, too... I bought a house built in 1954 from the
original owner... They had the carpet put down when the house was new,
and the original oak floor had never seen a day of wear. Over the
course of their ownership, they only had 1 dog, and it stayed outside,
so no pet stains to soak through and ruin the floor underneath.

The only thing I had to do was to fill in the few holes left by the
carpet tack strips with some colored wood filler, and you never know
that there was ever carpet on the floor. Looks like a brand new floor.

wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:28:17 GMT, Max wrote:


Please allow me to share a few universal, immutable Truths about the
wood flooring found in older homes.

When you hear the words "... and there's a wood floor under the carpet,"
what you should think is: " ... and the abused damaged ruined remnant of
a once-beautiful tongue and groove plainsawn oak floor lie beneath this
urine-stained berber."

Carpets are generally put on top of wood floors for a reason, and in my
experience -- this 50's ranch being my third, after two early 1890's
Vic's -- those reasons have a lot more to do with concealing/cheaply
covering up damage than it does with comfort, sound or any other very
plausible explanation.



Sorry to hear of your troubles, but those are not immutable truths. I
bought a 1950's ranch in 1995 from the original owners. It had wall to
wall carpet throughout, including inside all the closets. The carpet
was ancient and awful. Underneath it was a brand new 1952 oak floor
that had never been walked on other than to install the carpet. Back
in 1952, the houses in my neighborhood were built with oak floors as
standard, and wall to wall carpet as an extra cost option. If you went
for the carpet, they put it OVER the oak floor. When we had our
closing, we went straight over to the house and ripped up all of that
nasty carpet the same day. The floor underneath was in pristine
condition, and did not even need to be waxed. Not a mark on it.

Barney
I'm kind of in between on this. I just started
taking up the carpet in my house, built in 1962.
So far I have done one room, and the floor is in
fair condition. I waxed it and it doesn't look
bad. This is my bed room. My biggest concern
will be the living room.

Bill Gill

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 18:28:17 GMT, Max wrote:

Please allow me to share a few universal, immutable Truths about the
wood flooring found in older homes.

When you hear the words "... and there's a wood floor under the carpet,"
what you should think is: " ... and the abused damaged ruined remnant of
a once-beautiful tongue and groove plainsawn oak floor lie beneath this
urine-stained berber."

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience(s). I guess I got lucky. My
house was built in 1930. The floors in the bedrooms are fir; the rest
of the house is oak (I'm not sure about the kitchen...does anyone know
if they typically put hardwood in there?).

I pulled up the filthy carpet in the bedroom soon after buying the
house, and had that room refinsihed by a professional. There were no
stains on the floor. Just recently, I pulled the carpet out of main
parts of the house (hall, living room, dining room). Despite the
backside of the carpet showing a horrifying number of what appeared to
be dog piddle stains, the floor was in great shape except for needing
some patches where some vents had been.

I was amazed at how well the hall refinished. Someone in years past
had glued a foam-backed carpet to half of the hallway. (I could see
where they had spread on the adhesive with a notched trowel). When
they ripped up the carpet, the foam stayed stuck. So they simply laid
carpet pad and then wall-to-wall carpet over the mess. Another part
of the hall had what appeared to be tar paper stuck to it. Hours of
careful scraping got most of the mess off, and the floor guy got the
rest of it off by scraping and sanding.

I will never understand how someone could GLUE something to these
lovely oak strips. I guess they just took this kind of flooring for
granted back in the day?

Lauri in WA


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