The first step we took to modernize our home was refinishing the hardwood floors! The entire first floor has beautiful white oak hardwood, with the exception of some dated, tan carpeting in the entryway and hallway. Here’s a look at the carpeting (excuse the poor picture quality, we went deep into our photo archives for this):

Hardwood flooring was a major selling point for us for a few reasons. If kept in good shape, it adds major value to your home, is easy to clean and doesn’t trap dirt like carpeting does (we are both clean freaks), and it adds warmth to the decor. We knew we wanted an airy, beachy vibe for our house, so the dark stain had to go.

To start, we ripped out the carpets in the entryway and hallway the same day that we closed on the house. That was a tough, sweaty job, considering it was an 80-degree day in August (our house did NOT have air conditioning!!). We were so excited to start our first project, and we knew that it was ideal to have the floors refinished while the house was empty of furniture.

Carpet removal tools:

• leather work gloves (to protect you from the many sharp staples holding the rug in place)
• pliers/pry bar
• hammer
• utility knife/box cutter (to cut the rug into smaller pieces to fit in your trash)

The easiest way to remove carpeting is to start from a corner of the room. You can use a pry bar or pliers to pull up the rug from where it’s stapled to the floor. In our case, we were able to grab it by hand. We basically just kept pulling out the carpet along the wall (our carpet sections were narrow and not covering an entire living area), until all of it is removed. Luckily, the hardwood floors ran under the carpet! It makes you wonder why people cover those up?!

Next, look around the edges of the room where the carpeting was stapled, and pull out any remaining staples or nails that you find. We used pliers to remove the staples, and the back end of a hammer to yank out the nails. Warning: this is the slower, more tedious aspect of the project. It takes muscle and patience, and pays to double check your work so you don’t leave any sharp staples behind!

Refinishing the floors

Eventually, all of the carpet and staples were gone for good! We hired a pro to sand and refinish our floors, since we were new to the DIY game and didn’t want to mess up such an important feature of our house. Once we saw the floors after sanding, we were blown away by how pretty they were! They looked brand new. We knew then that we didn’t want to stain them or change their natural color, so we chose to have a clear, water-based polyurethane finish applied. We intentionally chose water-based vs. oil-based polyurethane because the oil-based tends to look more amber instead of clear. After two days and two coats of polyurethane, we had light, shiny, and protected floors!

To this day, the white oak floors are our favorite part of our house! Sanding off the dark stain and clear-coating them brightened up every room, making the house feel bigger and lighter. Also, the light wood reminds us of sand on a beach.

What’s not to love?! Keep following along for more house updates!