spelunking for hardwood

The last thing the menfolk did on demo day was to rip out the carpet in the old dining room. They left the foam pad there, but Don's dad did a little excavating in the threshold of the no-longer-there doorway and we discovered what we were in for.

There are no fewer than six layers of flooring on that floor, including but not limited to: hideously ugly linoleum; fake hardwood linoleum; some kind of vinyl tile; and very thin green carpet tiles. You can see most of them in this sort of cross-section:

Underneath it all, though, we knew there was hardwood. You can actually see a little of it in the picture above, in the top left corner. Above the cross-section is the other room, where the hardwood had never been covered up (except by dust from the demolition, that is!).

So one day last week, I took a break from what I was doing and did some scraping. The end result? A pleasant surprise. The vinyl came up in great swathes with very little prodding, and underneath was the original hardwood floor, in great condition. Structurally speaking, anyway.

There's still a lot of adhesive from the lineoleum stuck to the wood, but we're pretty sure that with some scraping and sanding, it'll come off. The wood itself is fine; no warping or twisting, no giant holes or anything. Provided we can get rid of the adhesive, it'll look like new. Refinishing is a lot less expensive than replacing, so I'm pleased about this development. From what I can see, it looks like the hardwood extends at least out into the front hallway. I don't know about the living room yet, but I'm inclined to think that it's there, too.

Maybe it's not exactly spelunking, but it does feel like we've found hidden treasure!