When we were looking at the house, the 3 bedrooms had ugly, dirty, beige carpet. The rest of the house had old but nice hardwood floors. I was able to pull the corners of the carpet up enough to confirm the hardwood went into two of the bedrooms.
One of the first things that was done was done after taking possession of the house was the removal of the carpet. My father-in-law removed all of it for me when I was at work. The two rooms that I had checked before buying the house were in decent shape. There were some stains to the floor from liquids spilled on the carpets. The third room contained a surprise.
There had been another carpet at some time in the past and it had been glued to the floor directly. That scared me a lot because I wasn't sure if the glued on stuff would come off. My dad came up with the idea to use a scraper and heat gun which worked out pretty good.
Eventually, the floors were stripped of all the leftover carpet backing. I rented a large floor sander from a hardware store to sand the floors to bare wood.
My dad and I then applied mineral spirits to the floor to give it some color before applying a clear satin polyurethane.
Overall I think the floor turned out pretty good. Since I did the work myself, I can see the flaws. I can see the places where I overlapped the polyurethane to much or maybe where I didn't use enough. I am happy that we were able to restore the floors, especially the one that had the carpet glue on it. I think wood floors are so much easier to clean an maintain when compared to carpet.
