The living room in the house has original wood plank floors that fit the house perfectly: the wood looks well-used and has lots of character. It’s the kind of floor that makes you wonder about its history, all of the people who have walked on it and what they were doing, and grateful that you can add a little more history to it:

And then there’s the dining room…

The dining room is right next to the living room, and instead of wood floors it has this carpet:

It’s cheap, it’s purple, and it’s in the dining room, so it has to go. We had a slim hope that underneath this carpet the wood plank floors would continue, so we decided to find out.

Peeling up the carpet and pad was pretty easy, and underneath we found this:

Linoleum that was even uglier than the carpet…cool. Revealed in all of its glory:

Still hopeful for wood, we pried up the carpet tack strips and started peeling up the linoleum. Under the linoleum was a layer of felt roofing paper, and underneath that:

The plywood subfloor.

Disappointing, but ok. We are going to take some time to decide what we want to do for final flooring here, but for now the plywood will work. We will probably end up trying to find wood planks that match the living room as well as possible, but for now this short project is finished. At least now we know…