The Ups and Downs of Living in an Old House

Living in an old house in the greatest thing in the whole world. Living in an old house is also the biggest pain in the butt in the whole world. The current trials and tribulations: flooring.
We moved into our house close to three years ago. Downstairs we had beautiful super old wood floors (original wood) except the addition which had carpet (it was put in the last 15 years or so) and the bathroom and kitchen. Upstairs we had the same carpet - carpet that I HATE. Absolutely hate this stuff - it's super gross because the lady before us never cleaned it and had a really dirty dog so I never feel comfortable even walking on it - for three years. Since we moved in it's been one excuse after another as to why we haven't finished the flooring the way we liked. But now I'm done with excuses - we've been here three years and while it will be an absolute pain to deal with the floors, it either needs to get done or I need to accept that it will never get done and get it off my darn "to do" list. :)
So I talked Cody into jumping off the perverbial flooring cliff with me. There are a number of issues - for instance we have carpet upstairs but know there is at least to some degree old hardwood underneath the carpet. We have stairs that are currently carpet (I cannot stand carpet on stairs - while it is gorgeous in other people's homes it is WAY too much work for me to keep clean) and are unsure if underneath is hardwood or plywood or plywood painted (and likely with lead paint). So tonight we got started figuring all this out. We went all around upstairs with a razor knife and just started cutting the carpet up all over the place. The verdict? Our spare bedroom is 90% good old hardwood that just needs to be finished and 10% plywood where they had to fill in places for old vents, etc. The hallway is hardwood - yeah! The stairs are wood - but not the same hardwood or plywood - but a wood that I think they can "finish" and while the size won't totally match the rest of the wood I'll be happy enough with it because it will have a runner over it. Our bedroom on the other hand looks like it is about 50% hardwood and 50% plywood - basically they used the bedroom hardwood to fill in spots in the downstairs wood when they rehabbed the house. So the good news is we get a new hardwood room and hardwood stairs (two less places with yucky carpet!!), but we will still have two carpeted rooms - but I guess that's okay because we are getting the hardwood rooms really cheap because they don't have to put anything new in, only finish what is already there.
So the next few weeks are an exciting dance of contractors and us painting trying to get it all right at the right time. We are going to try to get the wood guys out first for the spare room while we finish painting our room and the hallway. Then the wood guys can do the hallway and lastly the carpet people can do our room after the painting is done. This is a lot of things that have to happen perfectly in the right order - I'm crossing my fingers. :)