what the couple of layers of white carpet cover...

[Neal Clayton]

got around to starting to finish floors and put things back together this week. unfortunately the flu is slowing us down (both me and my hired help have it ) but we did get one room of floors finished yesterday and today at least.

like everything else, oil sealer, garnet shellac, satin waterlox on top. 2 of each got this looking about like what we were shooting for.

the specks on the bottom right? best idea we could come up with is golf cleats. they follow a pattern to where the back stairs used to be, then around to the nearest bathroom, and back to the center of this room. some we were able to sand out, some were surrounded by enough sapwood areas in the boards to fill, some will just be there forever.

anyways, this is what the knuckleheads who lived here before put white carpet over after tearing up with their golf shoes...

[Jim Rimmer]

I know there was a time when carpet was king but I just don't understand covering up hardwood floors.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

We had to sell my F-I-L's house last winter. While cleaning it out, we tore out the ugly ugly blue carpet he had - and struck "gold". We had to have someone refinish them, but it was amazing how beautiful they came out. *shrug* it was popular to carpet over it I guess. My parents (at one point) did the same thing...

[Scott Hildenbrand]

At one point in history having wall to wall carpet showed that a home was higher class and gave it more value.

Odd, no?

[Neal Clayton]

At one point in history having wall to wall carpet showed that a home was higher class and gave it more value.

Odd, no?

yeah, kinda like victorian wallpaper.

the only thing i can figure is they didn't like the squeaks upstairs. personally, i joke with people that a blind man could shoot a burglar in this house after he learned all the squeaks in the floors and stairs, i like em .

the golf cleat holes, on the other hand, they have no excuse for. that's just lazy and silly.

[Todd Hoppe]

Golf cleats, or a very heavy guest wearing high heels...

[John Thompson]

Carpet over hard-wood floors. Ain't life Grand? I remember as a kid those formica top kitchen tables with the big chrome band around them came out. People got them with the chrome legged chairs as it was "the rage" at the time. They toted their kitchen talbes with the claw feet to the street for the trash guys to pick up....

Bet they wish they had those oak tables back now and many do as they had to go out and purchase another after "the rage" was no longer a rage and oak talbes made their way back to prominence.

Ain't life Grand? ...

[Neal Clayton]

i blame the marketing john . i've had people argue with me that ikea cabinets are better than what a local cabinet maker can produce because of the warranty too. some people will believe anything a salesman tells them, i guess.

[JohnMorgan of Lititz]

I'm in the flooring business and see a ton of homes around our area that have carpet over hardwood. I was told by someone that at one point in time a home mortgage would not be approved unless the home being built had wooden floors. This being the case, not everyone wants to live with hardwood, therefore, house was built with oak floors and covered right up w/ carpet. Therefore, the mortgage company would approve it since technically it had the wood floors. Might be a stretch of a story the guy told me, but on the other hand, believable.

[Neal Clayton]

probably due to older carpets being flammable. carpets being fire retardant was code for commercial buildings quite a while ago, residential....maybe not. but if i had to offer a guess that's what my it would be on that. maybe there were shortages of fire retardant flooring products after the asbestos ban?

[Rick Potter]

When I was a bit younger, say, in the early sixties, I worked as a carpet cleaner, and sometimes carpet layer. It was very common for SoCal tract homes built in the 50's to have hardwood floors. They were covered with WW carpet for two main reasons.

1. Animal stains ruined the hardwood. It was turned black or yellow and had to be sealed before covering with carpeting (smell). I can't tell you how many homes where I saw this (hundreds).

2. People almost always had rugs (loose rugs as opposed to carpeting which is wall to wall) covering most of the floor anyway. They usually had a braided, rag, or Persian type rug covering the center of the room with wood showing a foot or two around the edge. This was a pain to take care of. They had to vacuum the rug, and dry mop the wood, which would show dust. The vacuum would curl up the edges of the rug and cause tripping problems sometimes. Ever see cartoons showing someone sweeping dirt UNDER the rug? It was no joke in a lot of homes.

Anyway, I was told by a lot of customers that the WW carpet was much less maintenance, and kept the house warmer. It was also stylish at the time, somewhat like white P-board cabinets are now.

Like I said, this was my experience, in SoCal. Yours may vary. At this time, it was an exploding real estate market here, and you could see the population moving East, North, and South of LA as cities grew exponentially. It was an era of almost throw away homes as the new tracts (hundreds of homes at a time) went in, and people moved to them because they were always larger than the homes built 5 years previous. You can almost tell how far from LA a house is by the size. A fifty year old home here is almost a historical landmark.

Of course, after the 1950's very few homes had hardwood floors, and most were built on slabs, making the point moot, until the fashions changed back, which I suppose is why they developed snap together floating wood flooring.

I guess I could use my home history as an example. Married in 1964 and bought an 1100 sq ft house built in 1952, in 1966 moved into a 1400 ft house built in 1963, in 1973 it was a new 2200 ft house, and in 2005 into a 2500 ft house built in 1978. My daughter bought a 2886 sq ft house in 2001, and my son built a 3500 ft house in 2004. Each of these moves, and homes is one more step away from LA. All the houses except the 1952 model are on slabs, and the 1952 house had WW carpet when we bought it in 1964 (bad HW floors).

Rick Potter

[Tom Godley]

The old builder I used to work with told me the same story about not being able to get loans unless the house had wood floors. The banks did not want to install new carpet if they took the house back.

I bought a house that had floors that were covered for 50 years -- they were never even sanded -- still had pencil marks on some of the boards!

[Jon Crowley]

My entire house has original hardwood flooring. When we bought it, it was all carpet on top... except for the kitchen where they put some kind of pergo wood flooring on top. Seriously, it's not that much work to refinish a wood floor...

I have the living room and hallways back to the original now. Left the bedrooms carpeted per wife's request. I will say the carpet is nice for our one year old. Watching her try to crawl on the slick wood was interesting at first before she got the hang of it.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

At one point in history having wall to wall carpet showed that a home was higher class and gave it more value.

Odd, no?

Yep, my uncle once told me that they used to feel bad for those that had hardwood floors. They couldn't afford carpeting!! Funny how times change...

I wish our house had hardwood floors under the crappy carpeting!!

[Dave Hasson]

We had the same thing in our 85 year old Chicago Bungalow.

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