Last week we finally removed the laminate flooring in our spare bedroom (You can read more about it here).
You know how desperate I was to rip it all out, well, I have a bit of a confession to make… I may have gotten just a tiny bit carried away. Ever so slightly…
Until yesterday, this is what our hallway looked like.
We already restored the staircase a while ago (read more about it here), but all of our efforts are really let down by the rest of the hallway.
The walls are covered in flacking Artex and the laminate flooring has definitely seen better days.
Now, after a few hours of work removing the side cover strips,
ripping up the laminate panels and
removing the underlay
we’ve gone from our dirty laminate flooring to even dirtier floorboards.
I admit, it’s not much of an improvement, but at least it’s a start. I wonder what Jan will say when he gets home. Last time when I painted the whole hallway white (it used to be a really awful brown), he didn’t even notice!
Have you ever worked on a project and no one noticed a difference? In our flooring removal madness, we’ve actually taken another room to pieces, too. Can you guess what we’ve done?
Wow! Even with the floorboards needing some love, it’s such a huge improvement over the laminate! You can just tell that is what your house is supposed to look like.
Thanks Abby! I still get a shock every time I walk through the front door – somehow I keep forgetting that the laminate is gone. I fully agree, the floorboards already look so much better than the laminate!
Cx
It does look better, no kidding! Have you decided what you’ll do upstairs? And that other project, have you torn down the wall between your kitchen and your dining-room?
We’ve have decided what we’ll be doing upstairs and in the hall! Hopefully we’ll be able to share the result next week. I wish the other project was the wall between the kitchen and dining room! Still sorting out details with the structural engineer. I can’t wait!
Cx
Better already! No more invisible laminate, and making room for old, beautiful wood. Love it. Nice work!
Thanks Leslie! Hopefully it will look even better after this weekend…
Cx
I am not a big fan of laminate so even tho it ‘s a big job, I still love the progress you’ve made. I thought of you when I saw this amazing picture on pinterest of pull out drawer/ cupboards under a stairway. Have you seen it?
Thanks Kerrie! We’re not fans of laminate either, so already think the floor is an improvement, too! I know the drawers/cupboards you mean – they’re pretty amazing. If we could, we’d already have built them, but the staircase leading to our cellar is under the staircase to the first floor, so sadly not cupboards for us…
Cx
All I can say is, YES YES YES to those floors! That took courage. The transformation is the equivalent of having a guy with a really bad comb-over decide one day to shave his head. Dork to stud, just like that. Looks great.
I know! It’s such a huge difference! Wait till you see what we’ve been doing to it this weekend! Now all I need to do is transform Jan from the dork into the stud, too ;-).
Cx
I absolutely love the look of original floorboards, yours look amazing even before being sanded! We’ve just moved into a large Victorian house converted into flats (we have the ground floor) and I want to do this in our hallway and perhaps the lounge at some point. I’m just very worried about drafts as we are the ground floor and I assume there will be no draft proofing. I’ve heard things can get very cold if this isn’t done properly and we aren’t experienced DIYers at all! Do you have any advice on this?! I should probably just get someone in to give me a quote for draft proofing, as we don’t have a huge amount of time to do it ourselves unfortunately :-(.
I think what you have done to your house is amazing by the way! Perfectly in keeping with how it was supposed to look!
Lauren x
Thank you Lauren, that’s so kind!
We would definitely recommend insulating and draught proofing the floor if you’re planning on just having floorboards! It would just be way too cold otherwise.
We have a little crawlspace under our house, so for us it was easy to do, but I honestly can’t see you ever been warm again if you don’t. For the gaps between the skirting and floor, we actually just used some weatherstrip tape. It was cheap, took about 15min per room to install and is really effective. (You can read about how we filled the gap here: https://www.littlehouseonthecorner.com/insulating/ and about how we insulated our floor here: https://www.littlehouseonthecorner.com/oh-feeling-weve-finished-cellar-ceiling/ and here:https://www.littlehouseonthecorner.com/?s=crawling+in+the+dark)
Hope that’s some help! Good luck with your floors!
Cx