Before Pictures -- September 2005

When we bought our house it seriously needed some major rehabbing. We have been working on it for two years now, and we still have a long way to go.
The two major problems at first were the awful carpeting throughout the house (including the bathroom) and the rotted floor in the laundry room. As you can see in the before photo slideshow, we had a lot of work ahead of us!



We didn't know whether the house had hardwood underneath the carpet until we started pulling it up on the first day of work. We were so surprised when we pulled up the corner of the carpet and there they were, the original hardwoods from over one hundred years ago! We can't be sure of what kind of wood they are, but they have a gorgeous red tint to them. The first pictures of the hardwood floors are also included in the before photo slideshow above. Some of the floors were very damaged and our "expert" sanders got most of the imperfections out before we began to polyurethane. We used a natural stain, but the floors are so old that it soaked it up and it became very dark. We still like it though, and we wouldn't have that gorgeous red tint without it.

The slideshow below shows some pictures of the work as it progressed and I have a couple of pictures of the floors after we had finished the polyurethane on them.



I hope you enjoy looking at the photos of the beginning of our cottage renovation. A complete set of after pictures will be coming soon! Don't turn that dial!