I just sanded our dark, wooden floor – here’s what I’ve learned after putting it off for seven years (and yes, I cried)

A woman partway through a diy project of sanding her wooden floor.

Home decorator Lara Winter is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on revamping a 200 year old cottage to make it right for modern family life. See the rest of her articles here.

What happens when you finally tackle a job you’ve been putting off for seven years? In my case, sanding the wooden floor in the one room you have to walk through to reach almost every other part of the house. It wasn’t that I didn’t want beautifully light, fresh floorboards. I absolutely did. I just dreaded the chaos. How do you sand a walkthrough space without turning your entire home into a dust-coated obstacle course? For seven years, the answer was: you don’t. You avoid it, complain about it, and promise yourself you’ll deal with it “next spring.”