Major Conundrum

So, it seems that when I get pregnant I redo our library. Did I not mention I was pregnant? That’s probably because all five people who read this already know and there doesn’t seem much point in mentioning it again. Anyway.

When I got pregnant with The Goblin Child I cleaned and painted the one spare room to make a library downstairs, theoretically so we could bring my books down leaving room upstairs to put all the stuff (junk) that was in our soon to be nursery. Now that we are doing this kid thing again our downstairs library is going to have to go so we can add a new nursery. This is very sad for both of us, although it should mostly be for me the room is full and my scholar of a husband is yet to include any of his vast selection of books to the mix.

Our upstairs is not an upstairs like a second floor in a normal modern house. It is more of an attic requiring going nearly outside, onto the back porch and up to a narrow room squeezed into the peak of the roof . We treat it as an attic, a handy place to store the things we should get rid of and the treasures that there is simply no room for down in the living quarters of our tiny closetless house. Baby clothes currently not in use, Christmas decorations, heirlooms with too much sentimental value to get rid of but no earthly use, things like that.

We rented a storage unit in town and hauled as much stuff as we could in, leaving us with clear access to half of one of the two rooms. The goal was simple, paint the walls and pull up the shag carpet keeping the well worn, vintage linoleum. After painting the salmon colored walls it became clear that the ceiling was not cream colored but lemon yellow and HAD to be painted too, no problem just going to need a little more paint. The pee green carpet pulled up easy enough revealing a little more wear on the linoleum then the sides had shown, not a big deal but I also found a corner where the linoleum pulled easily away from the beautiful wood floor underneath. We had talked about pulling it and going with the wood but didn’t want to chance it being glued like the kitchen, which I  have not finished yet. Hey, life got in the way what with summer, gardening, being pregnant and a small change in priorities that require a nursery before a finished kitchen floor. Once you get used to it you hardly notice the glue patches that I couldn’t get up. Ok so we live like red necks, what ever.

The linoleum came up easy as could be, until I got to the seam. Not that it came up hard after that but the wood floor underneath changed considerably. Unlike the soft whit washed finish of the rest of the floor is suddenly looked varnished and well worn maybe even sanded in spots. I don’t believe it was. I happen to know that when the house was built wood floors were horribly out of style and the owners covered them as quickly as possible with the previously discussed linoleum. Leaving us, luckily, with  the equivalent of brand new wood floors. The floor up there doesn’t look any different from the rest of the house. There doesn’t seem to be a drop of finish, the white wash I think is left over from plastering the walls and not caring that any dropped on those tacky wood floors they were going to cover immediately after they finished the walls. So what caused the varnished look?

I theorize that it could have been water damage. The roof on that side leaked considerably before we tinned it. Could water have soaked through the linoleum and caused it to leach something onto the the wood beneath? Could they have used pre-used lumber for the floor? I have seen barns built of everything from used fence posts and telephone poles to paneling from old houses with the wall paper still intact. Our forefathers were resourceful.

I suppose the cause is beside the point, now I need to figure out what to do with it. I would really like the floor to stay softly white washed. I like the whole room in white. Do I need to sand the parts that are good? Do we have to finish it like the other floors we have redone downstairs? I would like it to stay not shiny. It is going to need something though right? As I did mention I am pregnant. I am also the only one with any time to spare, hah time to spare what a joke, and with the whole pregnant thing I can’t be inhaling too many fumes.

Do I try to sand and match the varnished looking parts to match the good parts? Or do we leave them and call it character?  After all it is just our attic, even with our library up there, no matter how beautiful I envision it being when finished,  how often will anybody see it? If we continue to pack it as full as it was before its slight remodel not much of the floor will be visible any way.

So dad, what do I do?