Hardwood Headache

If I could go back in time and have a little talk with 2006 Natasha I would tell her to NOT put hardwood floors in her new house.  I would tell her to go ahead and do the colored concrete she really wanted and not be talked into the hardwood decision.  Unfortunately I have no time machine, so I have hardwood floors.  Don't get me wrong, the floor is gorgeous.  It's incredibly beautiful, it's also incredibly fragile. (it wasn't supposed to be, but that is another story) It gets dented, dinged, and scratched at the slightest touch.  Living with this beautiful floor means living very, very carefully.  It also means not sweating the small stuff, life happens and a hardwood floor is going to look lived on. I have come to terms with all that, and me and the floor have made a separate peace.  I could not, however, be okay with the damage done to it by my cleaning ladies.  They are very aware of the fragility of the floor and are usually really careful.  One day one of them used a Magic Eraser on the floor to scrub some spots.  The Magic Eraser took off a layer of floor finish leaving scrub marks all over.  I will make a very long, frustrating story short - the entire downstairs had to be refinished.  Sanded and taken down to the wood, refinished. It's kind of a nightmare.  It took them a week to do the work, we had to send the dogs away, had no kitchen access, etc…   The inconvenience level was pretty high.   In the end it all worked out, we got through the week of work (Steve proved his adaptability and ingenuity by putting a ladder to the upstairs window and going in and out of the house that way) and the floor looks like new.  It is most likely still as fragile so I'm not giving up on my time machine wish.  

the process

re-finished