original wood floors

I decided to take somewhat of a risk and not replace the kitchen flooring but to have the vinyl and glue stripped to see how the original wood floors underneath would look. They are immaculate. Now I need to decide on a stain color.

paint ideas

Paint ideas. My friend Greg's house in Oakhurst.

Intervention

My neighbor replaced the perfectly good original windows with this job--notice the plywood infill. My realtor friend says that when you replace original windows and doors you take away 40% of the re-sale. We see this going on all over our neighborhood, people just don't get it. You can try to tell them, and it still doesn't register. Putting storm windows over the original windows, is a third of the cost of replacing them, has equal energy efficiency, and retains the value of your home: http://www.oldhouseguy.com/windows.php. Also, the wood used in these historic windows is slow growth, very dense, high quality, unlike the wood today The life expectancy for historic wood windows is hundreds of years, for vinyl, approximately 20-30 years.

My neighbor was intent on replacing all these windows below, like you see on the top photo. This side of his house dominated the view from my house. To try and prevent it, I offered to paint them for the cost of materials:

Trying to decide on a paint color is proving almost impossible:

After my dad applid Soy Gel paint remover to the wood work:

The bank applied the ugly red stain and plastic polyurethane to all the woodwork in the house (seen on the right). I believe that the removing it exposed the original finish of the wood (on the left). Originally, they would have likely used a high quality Danish Oil type stain that penetrates deeper into the wood, rather than the cheap stuff most people use today, thus, perhaps the original stain is not so much affected by the Soy Gel?

After stripping the woold floor in my kitchen of the glue and vinyl: The black spots are from the glue residue leaching into the wood. I was advised to save this old wood becaus I was told it is much better than the new replacment wood which comes from new growth oak. I tried sanding and bleaching these stains out, but it doesn't work. I will have to replace the flooring.