Mission Accomplished

And not in the George W. Bush way, either... For the first time in what feels like forever, I not only accomplished a project, I did it in the amount of time I expected it would take! My motivation to work on the house has skyrocketed, which is good, since I have so much else to do.
Here are the pictures of today's progress on the office:

The miraculous adhesive-free spot, surrounded by carpet, adhesive, and Citristrip

The finished product

The reason the floor looks so blotchy is because it is various stages of drying. The light area in the middle/upper right is bare, dry wood. Oddly enough, there was no adhesive there, and the padding just came right off. There was also no finish on the wood; it looked like it had just worn away. You can see the original finish in the top photo. It's not in very good shape, but it gave us indication of what color the floor was originally (amber).

Something anyone who uses Cistrstrip should know: it will raise the grain of the wood. After repeatedly scraping a treated area, I would occasionally catch splinters of wood. Ano even now, when I run my fingers across the boards, I can clearly feel the grain. It might go down again once it is completely dry, but I wouldn't recommend using Citristrip on anything you don't plan on sanding.

It's amazing how much more tolerable the wallpaper is with a bare wood floor. The room is still pretty fugly, but it's definitely showing signs of improvement. I can't do anything else to this room for a while, though, since the next step would be removing the wallpaper and ceiling tiles. The dining room comes next, so I'm in no position to deal with crumbling plaster and faux walls.

Next step: Order some garnet shellac and get busy on the living room trim.