To Replace or Not to Replace...

This was an ongoing question for many months.  Initially our intention was to sand and restain the floors to bring them back to life.  Who in their right mind would get rid of original, decent hardwood right?  The floors in the living/L-shaped dining room  were alright.  Sure they'd been scuffed up, scratched, dulled and a little warped, but no biggie right?

 Well once we were in full on demo mode, where walls were all down, the full bathroom was removed, we could see what the floors underneath were like.  Or rather, that there weren't any floors there at all...

The above is a picture of where the opening between the living and dining room once was.  You may remember seeing it like this during demo (the part furthest to the right is where a wall once stood and once we ripped the frame out, we were left with what you see in the above picture)

The door in the above picture was not an original fixture, it was once a solid wall.  The door was put in to convert the dining room into a bedroom.  When they opened that part of the wall up, they were obviously left with a gap in the floor like we were.  However unlike us, they decided to patch it in a really shabby way...

And then once we took the tub and flooring out of the bathroom, we saw that the previous owners thought it would be a good idea to cut all of the floor out in order to put icky vinyl flooring in instead.

Then there were a few other random holes like this one, where an old heating register/vent thing was in the middle of the house which = inefficient heating. 

And it's a little hard to see in that picture, but the kitchen side of the house and the living/dining side were two different heights.  We knew that if we put in new flooring we'd have to put a new subfloor in, which would raise the floor to be almost flush with the kitchen side.  So many factors to consider and in the end we decided to put new flooring in.  Not everyone's choice I know, and one that I struggled with, they hold so much history.  But the scale of the project was beyond what I think we could do.  The floors upstairs are better and I hope we can refinish them.

Pop back tomorrow to see the beginnings of the floor changes!

Have you had to replace old floors?  Did it break your heart too??  Or were you able to refinish your old ones (if so any tips/advice is appreciated as we hope to tackle that in the future)?