Yep, I have doug fir through the entire house. Only about a quarter of the house (the addition built in the '50s) has subfloor underneath, the rest (built in 1900) doesn't, and looks like it never did. There are all sorts of gaps and small holes, which my dog enjoys, since he takes great deep lungfuls of air through them to figure out who is coming home through the basement garage :-)

This flooring is beautiful now that it has been properly refinished, but it is indeed quite soft. It's just me and the dog, he is 55lb of manic labrador, and I have put him on a strict nailtrim schedule. Not that that helps a lot, since his nails grow wicked fast and when you're launching yourself at a toy, just about any nail left on his paw will scrabble at the floor and leave a mark. The good news is that the scratches are not super noticeable, except for obsessives like me.

I would make absolutely sure that every single board is firmly nailed down before refinishing. Jailbird contractor neglected to do that, and there are a couple of definite soft spots in the kitchen.

Gratuitous picture of pretty refinished floors...

flatcoat! I was just thinking about you. Haven't noticed any updates recently and was wondering how things were going.

We had that in our house, but tore it out of the first floor a few years ago and replaced with oak and subfloor. It's very common in our town as most of the houses are from that era, too. That is still the flooring in the rest of the house and the only problem is it is soft and old and splinters easily even though it was refinished. I think the upper floors were never really finished well before us.

As long as it's in good shape, you should be fine, and it looks great!

The house I grew up in was built in the 1920s and had fir subfloors. We refinished them in several rooms and they looked great. More recently my DH and I lived in a house with wide pine planks for flooring that were structural as well. In some places you coudl see light shining through but they were plenty sturdy for our son and two big dogs. They got lots of scratches though. We did the same in our current house (upstairs).

We insulated the basement ceiling to help with drafts. It was just horrible before that!

OT: sprengle, what kind of insulation did you install? Was it batting? Did you just cover up all the electric etc? Thanks!

I just read about a renovation in one of the magazines where the woman installed the soft fir floor before anything else in her renovation so that the workers would ding it up and make it look really old and interesting, then she just finished it with a hard poly finish. It looked great in the photos.

Hey pbrisjar, thanks for asking !

Well, I had a massive deadline, had to finish the house enough to have a huge family visit in October (I turned 40 ! so I had several siblings and my mum come to visit from Australia. For a MONTH.) The kitchen was essentially "finished" a couple hours before visitors arrived. Whew.

No new pictures, I guess I should take some to post a finished picture. Even though I can see all the mistakes and flaws, in general it looks pretty good, and more importantly, I *love* working in it. After having no kitchen for over 3years, I am now a cooking/baking fiend. (and I have the scars to prove it, but that's a whole other story). The kitchen is so efficient and fun to work in that I find myself preferring to stay home and cook for myself and friends rather than go out. And recent trips to restaurants often have me thinking "I like my version of this much better", whereas before I was just glad to have somewhere to eat !

Jailbird Contractor got out of jail in November, we have had a couple exchanges by email but he refuses to tell me where he is. I know that he has been by my house, and obviously he can see from the outside that the project is essentially done. He tells me that he feels very hurt that I no longer trust him. I can't beleive the moxie on this guy. I still have his tools. I don't really know what to do next. I am out about $15k, but honestly I bet he doesn't have that money to give me. I wish I had never met him, and boy was I happy to see the end of 2008. I just know that 2009 has to be better.

Now I am slowly working on projects in the rest of the house, window treatments and thinking about furniture and rugs etc. One thing I am super happy with is a set of roman shades I had made for the front living room ... I loved the fabric and thought about it a lot before pulling the trigger on it. Scary since it was so bold and playful. But I just adore how they turned out ... see ? Not everyone's cup of tea, I know, but life would be boring if everyone were the same, right ?

It's really been amazing what a difference some window treatments have made. I finally actually have a home :-)

A long answer to your inquiry ... thanks for asking ! I still drop in here occasionally to see what's going on.

Yes, batting. Though the ex installed it upside down...

Actually, he ran the wires through the bottom portion of the joists and tucked the batting up above them.

When we pulled up our shag carpeting, we refinished our fir floors. Yes, they get dinged but I like them. Today, you have to pay extra for it! We have fir floors upstairs and down in all the rooms except the bathrooms.

Flatcoat, those are GORGEOUS shades! Where did you find the fabric? It's like updated Marimekko prints (I'm a huge Danish Modern fan).

My house even has fir floors in the bathroom, and it's holding up splendidly for an octogenarian floor.

Ha ha, thanks circuspeanut ! I really adore these shades, they are like massive artworks. I wish I could take all the credit for choosing them, but I had advice from a wonderful interior designer. He found the fabric, and when we placed the order, we unfortunately found that it had been discontinued :-( We managed to find enough in inventory to complete the job though. I think it was from Pinder or Pindler ... I can look it up when I get home if you want.

They were spendy (due to fabrication costs - the fabric itself was very inexpensive), but in the two months they have been up, they have made me smile and given me joy every day.

I love a lot of Marimekko also :-), I just bought some Marimekko print bedlinens. I seem to be a very strange mixture of traditional and Modern.

flatcoat: how did I miss your house ??? WOW...that is so beautiful. The window treatments look like stained glass in that 2nd pic. Really really breathtakingly nice !

circus peanut.May I ask where you got the great hooks for your pot rack? And somehow I missed the final pics of your copper...that is simply stunning. Caroline

sorry to steal the thread..we have heartpine subfloors for the real floor. We did batting insulation too. Num nums that put it in did it upside down too...we made them come back. Our insulation is below it laid on the beams too. There back on topic. :)

I am using my Doug Fir subfloor as my floor in my 1924 bungalow. I often get comments (usually from guys)--"But it's the subfloor!" When I ask why that is bad, nobody can ever answer me. They are WAY more gorgeous than anything you could buy today.
Downside is they are cold because there is no insulation, but I do plan on having that spray-foam insulation put in when the price goes down, or possibly the styrofoam insulation 4 x 8's they sell at Home Depot.
I do NOT plan on having them in my kitchen, however, because I discovered after I refinished them that they get very slippery when wet! Instead I bought click-lock cork plank flooring that matches the colors in the Doug Fir. Since I am stuck in remodel hell, they have yet to be installed. Someday when (if?) I finish, I will be able to post pics, but I have found something close to it here:

http://www.ifloor.com/item_422958/cork-flooring/eurocork/cork-click-system-floating-tiles/sockeye-red.html

Carla in Sac

Thanks all---your floors are gorgeous, and make me want to stick with the fir even more! And flatcoat, that sounds VERY familiar....we have a lab as well, and joke that we can tell by his deep inhalations which leaky windows we should be insulating. ;)

Our fir is visible from the basement, so it sounds like we need to add insulation and/or tarpaper to it if it's going to become the primary floor. (I assume it was originally covered with linoleum, but who knows....the rest of the house has fir topped with oak.)

Caroline - The potrack hooks are 5" Bar Hooks by Rogar, in copper (of course). I can't remember where I got 'em - some rinky tink online emporium, I think. You can google for a number of sources. I love them! They're the only ones that can't fall off no matter how you twist your pots.
I posted a bunch of photos of my worn-in counters at the end of the DIY copper countertop thread. :)

Thanks Sprengle for the floor batting insulation info ... I have to do something soon, what with our current cold wave making for pretty cold toes.

artemis78, the thing I wonder about is the level of flooring going from one room to the next and how that will be if you remove the ceramic tile and only use the subfloor.

For example, my dining room has a doorway into the kitchen, and the dining room has oak hardwood and the kitchen has ceramic tile. There is a threshold in that doorway. When a prospective kitchen designer was at my house, I was asking him about whether we could just take up the tiles and refinish the subfloor and use it as the kitchen floor, and he said that there would be a height differential between my DR and kitchen. He could tell by looking at the flooring in the doorway that the hardwood DR floor and kitchen tile floor are currently even, so if we took away the tile and only used the subfloor, there would be a 3/4 inch "downstep" from the DR floor to the kitchen floor.

Other than that, I think refinishing a fir floor would be the bomb! Myself, I am tempted to take up my attic flooring and replace my kitchen tiles with it, just to get that old wood look.

thank you CP I will look up those hooks. They are great. And your kitchen....wow...simply gorgeous and so warm and inviting.

koala...we have a step up from the kitchen to the foyer of the master bedroom. It is a 3/4" transition. Here is a pic. We have 6" wide by 1" tall heart pine thresholds throughout most of the other downstairs doorways. Your feet get used to it right away. Don't let anyone talk you out of it. The wood is so much nice. If you need more pics let me know. Caroline

Yes, we'll definitely have a downstep as well. But in our case, we're coming from the other end of the spectrum---with the ceramic tile, we have about an inch upstep from the dining room into the kitchen, which in our old bungalow has the terrible side effect of meaning that the original swinging door doesn't swing anymore (only opens into the dining room). What's worse, the PO started to cut the bottom of the door to clear the tile and then stopped halfway through---I think when she realized that the hinge (one of those old floor hinges) wouldn't clear no matter what.....so it looks awful. *sigh* A project for another day....

Hi Caroline, your flooring looks beautiful! Thanks for posting that the step up works fine in a real life situation. My meeting with the prospective KD was one of those times where when someone I think is a purported expert (him) says something and makes me wonder "gee, he's seen a lot of kicthens, he must know what's right". And I get steered down a path that is less than how great it could be. It's a reason I love reading the threads here--they are from real people who speak from actually living in their spaces day to day.

Hi artemis, what's your dining room flooring?

If you've already got about an inch upstep up to the kitchen's tile floor, then by removing the tile and using the flooring that's under the tile, I think you'd solve that existing issue.

Have you've tried taking up a tile and seeing if it really is the subfloor that the tile is sitting on? From the floor height descriptions, it almost sounds like someone laid the tile on top of the original kitchen flooring (which would have been the same height as the dining room flooring and the tile now makes it 3/4" higher.)

glad you like it koala...I just wanted to be sure and show you that a) it can be done easily b) it looks great c) it is safe for ambulation.

artemis: are you planning on removing the tile for the whole kitchen ? I guess I don't understand. Otherwise I guess you would have to cut the rest of the door off...or as koala suggests just remove the tile that messes up the door movement and patch the bottom of the door..sigh...don't you love po's ???
Caroline

Koala, our dining room is quarter-sawn white oak with a mahogany greek key inlay---so while we want the kitchen floor to complement, we probably don't want to match it as far as style/cost goes.

Yes, we'd definitely remove the tile from the entire kitchen and also from the breakfast room, which connects. We'll eventually either level the door edge and have a small gap there or get a new-old one from the salvage yard since they seem to be in abundance there. (Almost bought one the other day that was still original wood on one side from some lucky soul whose dining room woodwork isn't all painted....but realized at the rate we're going it will be years before I strip the woodwork in there! ;) The door not clearing is a secondary issue, though---annoying but we could happily live with it if we didn't have other issues with the existing floor.