The Hatch - a floor refinishing/repair project with a story behind it.

Sometimes pulling up carpet in hopes of gaining a beautiful hardwood floor can introduce unexpected challenges. This is especially true in an older home with an unknown history. In such homes there are often secrets hidden beneath that carpet and sometimes in the wood itself.

As you can see in the before/after image below the before image shows that there was a plywood patch to the floor. It is uncertain as to why this was there, but it appears that originally there may have been a larger grate in place for the cold air return. Additionally there was a loud speaker under this plywood patch left there by some former house owner - strange. The customer not-so-affectionately referred to this unexpected phenomena as "the hatch" (if you don't get that reference, then go watch the Lost series). Nonetheless, in order to have a beautiful hardwood floor in this customer's living room the plywood had to go.

The current placement of the cold air return vent was an intrusion to the living room space, so the customer not only wanted the floor repaired, but the cold air return to be moved back as far as possible as well. The floor joists happen to run left to right in the picture (parallel to the wall in the background) and the position of a floor joist made it impossible to position the vents further back than where they are in the after picture. However, the new position of the cold air return vent is far better than where it was before.

To repair this floor I had to install additional/partial floor joists to support a sub floor. Then install the sub-floor and then cut to fit and pin the new red oak floor boards in place. These red oak floor boards were milled in my shop. I used some aged oak I happened to have on hand, which enabled a closer match to the old floor. Additionally I made it a point to not use only the best looking stuff that came from the boards I milled. This way there was a better match to the living room floor in terms of an overall, aged and worn appearance. Furthermore, the boards had to be more narrow than standard floor boards are today. Standard floor boards are about 2 1/2" wide while the original floor boards in this house are only 2" wide. I managed to match up the new boards with the width of the older adjacent boards in the repaired area between the vent and the wall, but the leading area did not get matched as well. I would have had to remove a good amount of material from one of the original boards and this just didn't sit well with me. Plus I figured that after all my efforts and even after the final finish is applied it will still look like a patch - so what the heck. It adds character and I actually like it like this and the customer is happy with the results so far.

Next week I will be refinishing the floor in this living room and hopefully this patch will blend it pretty well to the casual eye once the final finish is applied.

Dogwood Tales LLC - every project is a story unto itself.
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