When we took out the carpet downstairs, we were pretty happy to find hardwood floors underneath. They seemed to be in pretty good condition, but they needed a very good cleaning and perhaps refinishing.This is the floor in our foyer:

 

Given that refinishing would run us into thousands (for the whole house) and should probably be one of the last projects anyway I decided to give the foyer floor a try myself.

*side note, I had the most frustrating time researching how to tread hardwood. I finally found this article here that is pretty thorough. I am still not entirely sure that my floor is sealed with shellac, but I decided to go on the assumption that nothing much was done to it for a very, very long time.

So here is what I have done:

1. Used rubbing alcohol to remove paint splotches — I used a sponge and a scrapper as aids.

2. Then I cleaned the floor with Odorless Mineral Spirits to remove the wax. This step actually took a while as there was so many layers of old wax. I actually went over the floor several times and I am sure that there was plenty of wax left. But I couldn’t stnad it anymore so I decided to move to the next step.

3. Restore-a- Finish. It was so shiny! and so easy compared to all other steps!

  

 

4. After waiting for a whole lot longer than the hour the directions said (my suspicion that a bunch of wax was still on) it was time for the wax.

5. In an hour Sergey and I danced! It was sort of fun. A whole lot better than the wax on, wax off routine at least.

 

And there you have it – a shiny floor! Its not perfect. But I like it, its got what people call character! We may one day refinish the floors, but for now I am pretty happy with what we got.

  

On to the rest of the house!

By the way, does anyone know how to tell what type of wood this floor is?