What was the best hidden bonus you found in your home after living there for years?

We bought our house in 2011. It was a “flipped” house that a contractor effectively gutted, threw up some sheetrock and inexpensive fixtures, flooring, and vanities, and called it a day. That was ok, it had good “bones”.

The carpet in the house was new when we moved in but not good quality. At some point, we realized at least the high traffic areas would need replacing. We decided after several years that it would be better to just run laminate flooring, like we have in the large kitchen, through the whole main floor. We got an estimate and set our budget.

The floor in the living room had always been a little wonky. Right next to the stairs was a “soft spot” where it seemed like if you stepped too hard on it, you could end up falling into the basement. The contractor had been less than stellar about the reno job they did, which we discovered after we had been in the house for a few months. Electrical not wired exactly properly, studs in the wall were intermittent. It got to a point where I said the house was held together with bubble gum and duct tape. Needless to say, the soft spot on the floor was a concern.

Prior to having someone come in and start installing new flooring only to tell us all of the base floor needed replacing we knew we would need to pull back that carpet and see how bad it really was. The soft spot was actually a random board placed over a hole in the floor… scary, but then we pulled it all back and found this.

That bit of partical board we were so worried about finding out was the whole floor structure was only this big. The rest of the floor was original 1905 maple wood flooring. They had stapled the carpet to it and there was paint and texture all over it, but it was a real hardwood floor.

We got a hardwood guy to come in, he said he could fix the areas with the random wood, and we would use our laminate flooring budget to pay him. Turns out his reno would cost the same…

We did all the prep work, pulling out staples, getting as much of the surface cleaned up as we could. Three days of recovery work later we had this.

The floor was great and it was the original with the house, one of the few original things in the house. To this day we are amazed. The house had so many “shortcuts” that the contractor took, we sometimes waited for it to fall down on us while we slept, as we tried to keep up with fixing them. This was our reward for all the weirdness. Definitely worth the headaches.

Update: Here is the current configuration of the room, for some who asked.