My floor - before and after

Super exciting post this one - about floors. But if you've ever ripped up carpet expecting to find lovely floorboards underneath ready for a light sand and polish, but instead discovered rotting rubber moulded into the floor and just a lot of hard work, you'll know where I'm coming from in terms of whoo-hooness.
When we first moved in, my husband, Steve, spent a whole week covered in dust removing spray-on concrete-like stuff from the ceiling in our living and kitchen area. This landed - not surprisingly - on the floor (and all over him!), so rather than vacuuming it up and waiting to do the floors, we figured we'd rip up the carpet, dust and all, and live with bare floorboards for a few weeks until we found the time to give them a polish. Unfortunately, the carpet was kitchen carpet which was rubber-backed and GLUED all over the floor. So while the carpet came up, the rubber did not and no amount of elbow grease, industrial solvents or machines would get the black out - huge parts of it had moulded into the wood, making it look rotten. It was so much hard work, we just gave up and concentrated on other parts of the house. For three and a half years. I figured we'd come back to it when we found something dark enough to cover it...

BEFORE: After years of sanding and scraping, this is the best we got the floor looking.

BEFORE: A lovely close up to show how it really looks!

Then I discovered Feast Watson Black Japan while editing an article in real living. It's a really dark stain - practically black - and would be perfect to cover the patchy floor. It goes on like a dream - gliding over the sanded floor with one of those sheepskin applicators and dried surprisingly quickly. We followed with the top coat and said good riddance to the hideous floor beneath it and hello to dark, shiny floorboards.

AFTER: Much, much better!

Pros: Obviously dark enough to cover our bad floor, it's a great colour for all interior styles and easy to apply.
Cons: Unfortunately because it is like a paint, it wears away easily and high traffic areas will need to be redone more often than normal. It's made more obvious as well because it's so dark, so the contrast between the new stain and what was underneath stands out more. That said, it's entirely possible this is just our stupid floor or our application! And it didn't help that the workmen from the bathroom renovation scuffed it up a bit with all their heavy materials and shoes...
Overall: It's an incredible improvement on what we had before and we love it.