Well Hello, Refinished Hardwood Floors!

Remember my whole house project I mentioned a couple weeks back? Well over the past two weekends, we took the plunge and refinished our hardwood floors. DIY style of course! This isn't the first time we've talcked a whole house project DIY style, remember we painted our entire house in a weekend. We saved a bunch of moohlah and a blast even though its hard work. Let's talk about how our floors originally looked when we moved into our 1956 rancher. Plus why we waited to until my 7th month of pregnancy before taking on this dusty / smelly project. Here's a reminder how our floors once looked like.

One thing that we really loved about our Rancher was the wood floors & no carpet, which is a plus when your husband has asthma and a slew of allergies and your kid inherited a few too! Originally Mr. CLH & I talked about having our floors refinished when we fist moved into our house January 2009 - but we decided to wait and do it later. I'm so glad we did! Why? Well at the time we were still discovering our style in our little Rancher and most likely would have went with a color that now isn't US. And your home should always feel like you, right?


We started talking about going the DIY route refinishing our floors ourselves after finding out I was pregnant, basically it was now or never or 7 months later. After having a conversation with my dad when he was in town visiting, he offered to help Mr. CLH on the project and refinish the floors. We wanted to wait until the weather warmed up, which improves dry time, working conditions & moral. So finally we choose a date, the first weekend in April. Which lands on my birthday making this an awesome birthday present from my husband and my dad to me. 


After much talk and looking at stain options, Mr. CLH and I decided to go with Early American by Minwax for a couple of reasons. We liked how the color looked on our test we did in the closet. A deep color without being too dark. We loved the variations in the wood grain with the stan, to us thats the beauty of or refinishing old hardwood floors. We loved the imperfections and the 'movement' the stain created on the floors. 

Here's some before pictures of our original hardwood floors, in their orange glory. In some places our wood floors were still in 'solid condition' others not so much. Which is not too surprising since the floors are over 50 years old and we learned from our neighbors there was once carpet in the entire house covering up the floors. 

I'm loving our floors now, the rich dark floors so much! Removing the old finish and sanding down the floors to the natural wood grain, staining them and ploying makes the house feel CLEAN. Let me tell you no matter how ofter I would swiffer or clean the floors, they never looked 1/2 this good. They really help ground our space and make our home appear larger. The dark floors had the same affect in our tiny dining room.

The nusery floors before

After being sanding down to the bare wood, love how fresh the bare wood looked. Look at cute Mojo peaking though the door.

Nusery floors now = LOVE

I'll have more pictures of our hardwoods floors soon. Mr. CLH is working on a 'How To' post and adding up the cost for refinishing our floors DIY style. Trust me we SAVED a lot of money, had mini break downs from frustration (me) got giddy over looking at color, but in the end it was all worth it. 

What do you think of our refinished hardwood floors?