Wood Floor of the Week: 47 Stairs and A Wood Floor Mystery Solved

A before and after of the refinished 100-year-old white oak floor.The remnants of the "butler bell" in the home's dining room.The contractor signatures discovered under wallpaper dated back to 1901.Aaron Sheaves of Sheaves Floors LLC spends a lot of time in old houses.

"We live in a historic area around Staunton, Va.,” he says. “A lot of the homes I'm working on—if not on a weekly basis, at least once a month—are 100-plus years old.”

This particular downtown home was built in 1901, and its 3,500 square feet of rift-and-quartered white oak is all original. Amazingly, the house, built by notable architect T.J. Collins, has only had three owners in its lifetime. "It was rough and yet held up well,” Sheaves says of the state of the floor when he arrived on site.

Sheaves worked with his grandfather, Larry, to sand the historic flooring with 60-, 80-, 100-, 120-grit. He used an edger on the three white oak staircases—a grueling 47 stairs in all. "It was a real pain sanding those," Sheaves laughs. 

As Sheaves worked on the home, he noticed a quirk he’d seen in multiple century-old houses before: a hole with a wire in it in the dining room floor. This time, the homeowner filled Sheaves in on its history: The hole and wire are the remains of a “butler bell”—a way to ring the maid or butler via a button recessed into the flooring. 

"If they needed something brought to them, they would use their foot, press the button and a bell would go off in the kitchen,” Sheaves says. “This house had a hole in the floor and the wire, but I have yet to ever see one that still has the button.”

The hole was left intact due to its historical value.

With that minor mystery solved, the Sheaveses completed the sanding and buffed on a walnut-color stain over the white oak. The stain was followed by a sealer and two coats of water-based finish.

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They wrapped up the large job in 11 days, but not before one more historical discovery was made at the site: “They took wallpaper down in one of the rooms and the wall was signed and dated by every contractor who worked on the walls—all the way back from 1901 to the 1940s to 1970,” Sheaves says.

Sheaves made sure to snap a picture. Although the homes he works on are old, it seems Sheaves is always learning something new. 

"All these old homes I work in, you see a lot of neat things you just don't see now,” he says.

Suppliers:

Abrasives, Finish, Multi-Disc, Stain: Bona | Edger: Lägler