Our house has an odd collection of flooring choices. Mr. O seems to have done everthing possible to "cover up" and "hide" the horror that someone enacted on lovely oak hardwood floors (may they burn in the circle of hell reserved for people who neglect their house). I don't -think- Mr. O actually did this horror. He was only in the house for 2-3 years.. I really hope it takes 10-12 years of neglect for damage to get this bad.

I'm fairly certain that a great flood swallowed this house at some point in the past (honestly I have no idea where the water came from..). When the waters receeded someone did nothing. They ignored the horror that is water sitting on lovely oak hardwood floors. In fact.. they may even have ignored soaking wet wall-to-wall carpets that were installed on top of lovely oak hardwood. In any case every hardwood floor we've revealed so far is horribly water stained.. and seems to be growing a lovely white/black mold.

We got a minor taste of this when we re-did the hard-wood in the bedroom. It had a couple of blemishes that we sanded and then stained the rest of the floor to match. Today's horror is.. beyond sanding and staining.

In addition to the staining/molding.. there have been some... questionable repairs made to the floor. In one place the floor was brought back to level by glueing a ruler into the hardwood. If we do end up refinishing the floor I'm half tempted to leave it.. sort of like a decorative (and yet retarded) inlay.

In another place they nailed the shit out of the floor. I assume that board was "bad" and they felt that they needed to punish it. One puny little board has, I kid you not, 12 nails in just 4 inches of the board.

The room is by no stretch of the imaginiation "done" but it's actually better than it was. Even though it looks worse... I'm happier.

The current plan is to ask Mom and Dad what they would do when they stay with us next month. Marc really wants to just tear it out and replace it with Pergo. I really want to keep the oak floor but I'm not sure if we're up to the task of this much restoration.

On a happy note.. we found fibers from the carpet embedded in the tile adhesive at the door. This means that the carpet was put in the office before the tile was laid in the rest of the house. We think (hope) that this means that the hardwood hidden by the tile in the rest of the house is in better shape than the hardwood in the bedroom. Our reasoning: Mr. O said that the carpeting had been in the bedroom for about 8 months when we bought the house. The carpet was installed before the tile. It seems logical that if you were selling a house you would cover up the worst stained floor first.. and then work your way on to the rest of the floors. So maybe (if we're lucky) the rest of the floors will be like the bedroom floor.. restored with sanding and staining. Ok.. we're freakishly optimistic.