Restoring Shine to an Old Hardwood Floor

If you own an older home that has carpet you often wonder, could there be hardwood floors hidden underneath?  And then you think, "surely no one would cover up a hardwood floor, that seems ridiculous!" That is definitely something we wondered when we bought our house several years ago- but, we were never quite ready to discover the truth.  So we lived with carpet that I really couldn't stand for over 2 years before we even looked.  If you learn anything from me on this blog please learn to check under your carpet as soon as you move in! You never know what treasure lies beneath.

So one random day we got up the nerve to peek underneath.  One of our friends Mark was over and we were watching March Madness and for some reason we thought yes, this is this best time for this. First we pulled back a little by the vents and we could see it - it was right there the whole time.

Boy were we excited, but then a little rush of nervousness ran over us - what was the condition of the floor and were we ready to dive into that?  That feeling was a fleeting moment because we barely blinked and dove right in and started ripping out the carpet.  It's great when you really don't have a plan and you pull out carpet while moving furniture around the whole situation.  Skills.  So, below you can see the condition of the floor.  Not the best but not the worst either.  I was just exited that the floor was seamless throughout.  No weird patches or major issues.

After we got the living room carpet out we decided to pull out the rest.  Two of our bedrooms and the the little hallway is all hardwood (the kitchen, bathroom and addition of the house is not).  The biggest issue the flooring had was paint splatters.  Somewhere down the line I guess the idea of carpet sounded awesome so they haphazardly painted the rooms with no regard to the beautiful hardwood floor.  So for days I scrubbed and scrapped little paint splotches until the floor was clean.  It was pretty awful but worth it.   I'm sure you are all now wondering, why not refinish the floors?  Yes, totally something we want to do but currently our schedule just has not lended us to that.  We just haven't found a good time yet.  So, luckily for us the floor is in good enough shape to get through for a while just the way it is.  Actually the bedrooms are awesome, the only really bad room is the living room - but we are making it work.

So after the paint was all cleaned up I searched around for a good cleaning solution.  I settled on the Bona products.  I have to say, I really like them.  I used the floor cleaner and scrubbing pad that came with it first and then used the floor polish.  I just followed the directions from the bottles.  It was really easy.  Oh, and side note Target carries this product and it cost significantly less than the other large hardware stores.

Another side note, someone really like their round rug years ago.  After you apply the first coat of polish it will look super glossy (I chose the glossy finish as opposed to the satin).  It will not dry this glossy.  I ended up applying 3 coats of polish until I was satisfied with the finish.

Here is the final result...So much better right?  You have to kind of look above at the ripping out of carpet pictures to see the before but it definitely made a huge difference.

I just don't understand why someone covered this up!

If you have an older hardwood floor that you aren't ready to completely refinish yet then I would say give these products a try.  I was super surprised at how much the floors came to life after.

I'm sitting here months later looking at the floor and I can say that the shine is definitely still here.  It has really held up well.  We love, love our floors and love that we are bringing a little bit of the original part of the house back to life.