and this is what it looked like before

the first thing we did in the house was tear out the carpet from the living room/dining room/hallway. look at gricklepants tear out that gross carpet pad! thankfully, the floors underneath were in gorgeous condition. (the 'gorgeous' modifier may make it sound like we didn't have to do anything else other than rip out the carpet and carpet pad, but in truth, we had to scrub to remove all the carpet pad dust that had worked its way into the crevices of the wood, as well as strip the wax finish then re-wax it. but at least we didn't have to do anything crazy like sand the floors.)