Floored.

Three years ago this summer, we moved into a little old house/a big new project. It had leaks, cracks, a pack rat and no air conditioning. We considered it a home improvement adventure. We were eager to begin our communion with sawdust.

We started with walls and pipes and wires and ducts, but what I remember most are the wood floors. Having grown up in a house with below-grade cement floors, I’d dreamed of having floors that would creak and stay at room temperature. And I had them – or I would, after the excavation.

First, there were joists and subfloors to be replaced and repaired.

The original pine floors were dark with decades-old dust and varnish, and we decided to sand and refinish them ourselves. We rented the machines, and a neighbor friend from up the road came down to demonstrate. Then we sanded – not quite as much as we should have, maybe – and added layer after layer of clear polyurethane. Don took care of most of the floor with a big wool mop while I brushed in the edges.

It took a week of working all day and after dark. We noticed too late the thin spots, the rough patches, the one can of Gloss among all the other cans of Satin, and the insects that are now forever preserved in our floor finish. (And that I had worked face-to-fumes for days, recently and obliviously pregnant. Evidently we didn’t know what we were doing in more ways than one.)

But those floors  – and that baby – turned out fine. And now we’re glad to have had the practice.

Because three years later, that baby is old enough to say “floor sander,” and we’ve been living with my mother long enough to see our “adventure” in for what it really is. (Use your imagination; I’m keeping it PG.)

On the agenda: a thousand or more square feet of wood floors new and [mostly] old, ready for sanding and sealing.

Twice in the last two weeks, we’ve found ourselves moving floorboards from the back of a pickup into our kitchen-to-be, after 10 p.m. – when Jack is asleep in his car seat, and temperatures have fallen into the 80s.

Some came from another nearby old house, the family homestead of a local historian. Some were a pleasant discovery when we kicked off this project and demolished a leaky, rotting sleeping porch from the back of the house.  The last batch, which saved us from a hallway transition to tile, came from an old school building – my old school building. This house, when it’s finished, will have floors that I’ve known since the sixth grade and floors that haven’t seen life in decades.

They’re curved, cupped and warped, just as old and imperfect as the house we started with. They’re recycled and reclaimed. But reincarnated is more like it.