{"id":5187,"date":"2011-04-09T03:45:55","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T10:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=5187"},"modified":"2011-04-09T03:45:55","modified_gmt":"2011-04-09T10:45:55","slug":"the-ghosts-of-old-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/09\/the-ghosts-of-old-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"The ghosts of old houses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or what I did while not blogging yesterday.<\/b><\/p>\n

I need a Ouija board. Or a medium. Yeah, a seance is in order. I really, seriously need to have a talk with the ghosts of the long-dead folks who built this house! I’ve got hard questions for those old haunts.<\/p>\n

I mentioned the other day that the living room floor had already surprised me with an “issue”<\/a> as I prepared to rip the wall-to-wall carpet out. <\/p>\n

You old-house mavens told me what I was about to encounter. You were right — as far as that went.<\/p>\n

Today was the day the ripping began. Before pulling up the carpet, though, the very handy handyman helping me took out the hideous raised platform that was under and around the pellet stove. This is what we found underneath:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes. A hole. With a … thing in it. And if that abomination isn’t exactly smack in the middle of my living room, it’s not discreetly tucked in a corner, either. It’s right next to the kitchen door, for one.<\/p>\n

Then we started carpet ripping:<\/p>\n

\"Living<\/a><\/p>\n

You prepared me for what to expect: A big rectangle of ugly rough wood in the middle of the floor. <\/p>\n

Well, sorta-kinda in the middle of the floor. The geniuses who designed the place positioned it exactly four feet from one wall, 45 inches from another, 54 inches from another, and a completely inexplicable 28 inches from the fourth wall.<\/p>\n

The Big Ugly is 8-1\/2 feet wide, which wouldn’t be too hard to cover with an area rug. Then it’s about 14-feet 9-inches long, which is way beyond affordable rug length. Time to get creative with floor paint or canvas floorcloth. (And thanks once again for that knowledge.)<\/p>\n

From the look of all those rectangles within rectangles, I’m thinking several generations of residents must have attempted to cope with The Big Ugly in their own ways.<\/p>\n

Still, every wood floor in the world is more beautiful than wall-to-wall carpet, and the photos don’t do this one justice. This is as far as we got today, but I can already see iIt’s going to “clean up real good.” However …<\/p>\n

\"Longer<\/a><\/p>\n

You know how I kept talking about oak? Gloating over the fact that I had oak? Well, yes and no.<\/p>\n

The bottom left half of the next pic is the bedroom (soon to become office) floor. Oak. Definitely. The top right? That’s the living room. Non-oak. Blatantly non-oak. I’m no wood expert, but I’m guessing vertical grain fir. Harder than today’s firs would be, for sure. Impressively tight-grained. But still a softwood and easily damaged by doggie claws. I see many, many coats of poly-stuff in my future.<\/p>\n

\"Oak<\/a><\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy. Delighted in fact to have found potential goodness under the carpet. Intrigued, even, by the challenge of solving its puzzles.<\/p>\n

Still, I would ask the spirits of those dearly departed homebuilders:<\/p>\n