I started working on the first bedroom in Nov. 2003. It is one of three and in the back of the house on the second floor. It was yellow and has two closets on each side of the chimney. The doors will be replaced but could be used and are  just ugly. The floor had linoleum wall to wall. There were a few plaster cracks but nothing major.

 

The first thing I wanted to see was what was under the floor. The linoleum came up easily and but there was tarpaper and then newspaper under that. From what I have read from the Old House Web boards show that this seemed to be common. It smelled and made quite a mess on the floor. The oily mess went trough the newspaper onto the floor and since I found the floor to be untouched in the middle I was worried how I would remove this. I also found there to be a stained and varnished border around the perimeter. Once I knew what I would have to deal with I lay the linoleum back and we started with the plaster then painting. I chose a sage color with light woodwork. Since none of the woodwork was old or even pretty I just painted it.

 

The floors took a while. Once everything was cleaned out of the room I could start cleaning the oily mess. It turned out mineral spirits cleaned this right up. It was very time consuming though. Having a bad knee there was no kneeling so I spent the time sitting and sliding across the floor scrubbing. Once that was done the varnish was removed. Now I had to match the color of the stain.  There would be no sanding because it was face nailed and I didn't want to lose any patina. Minwax Golden pecan and a touch of Red Oak worked for a close match. The almost 200 yr. old floor sucked it up but two coats looked real close to the old stain. This was much darker than I had wanted but they have grown on me. This was sealed with three coats of oil based polyurethane, hand sanding between each coat.

 

While I was working on the back bedroom, it made sense to start the front one too. A lot of mess at one time. There was wall to wall linoleum and a hairline crack on the ceiling. The walls were blue and I found a color that was acceptable. After the walls were patched, they were primed and then painted. Then the linoleum was removed to reveal not only stained and varnished floor but paint on top of some of this. It made stripping hard. The center of the floor was also untouched but this time it had paint drops all over from a previous bad paint job. I was able to get a lot of them up. It was cleaned with mineral spirits and stained with the same color as before. Then three coats of oil based satin poly sanded inbetween each coat.

 

The furniture was then taken out of storage and arranged. I have since purchased new (old) beds to replace these. Both rooms have the same closet doors and I really don't know what I going to do with them. Since they are solid doors they don't allow the closet to get heat and they tend to feel damp on the walls. Maybe some kind of grate....any ideas?

The landing had three layers of linoleum. The walls were primed and painted and the floors were done same as the others.

The third bedroom had been a work room all this time. It had to be cleaned out. It was not worked on until Nov. 2004. It 's a small room and I wanted to keep it simple so it has a 3/4 bed and will just have a small dresser.