We had a very busy, but very productive weekend. I'll try to do a couple of posts today so you can all get caught up on our progress :-) But the floors are done and they look fantastic! They are even better than I hoped they would be. The floor guy said that he thinks there may be a few white oak boards in with our red oak, which is why there is even more variation in the wood. The semi-gloss finish is great, just the right amount of shine. And the floors still have a ton of character, which I love. If you look close, you can still see the nail marks, dents, etc. Saturday morning I just went upstairs with my cup of coffee and sat in that window seat, just looking at the floors. It's amazing how much more finished the entire second floor feels now, even if we're missing shoe molding, still have lots of horrible wallpaper, and have all the furniture crammed into one room.
I even have pretty floors in my closet! Here is the transition between the red oak and the hickory floors in the front small bedroom. While you can tell that they are different floors, it really doesn't look that bad and it's not super noticeable. Someday we'll have the floor guy come and put some new finish on the hickory floors, then they'll at least have the same shine as the oak floors.

Something I was not at all expecting (and I don't know why I wasn't expecting this) was that the floor guy did everything. He installed transition pieces at our bathroom door and at the exterior balcony door, where before we just had big gaps in the floor. He put this new transition strip in our bedroom in front of the window seat, there was an entire floor board missing before. He didn't take any payment until the work was completely finished. He put up plastic so dust wouldn't get downstairs. Even now, there is very little dust from the sanding. He showed up on time every morning, and cleaned up everything each night. I was very nervous about hiring work out, but I am so happy we went with this floor guy. In fact, we're considering having him come back and install the floors on our first floor now. We were thinking of putting in prefinished wood floors ourselves downstairs, but after seeing how these floors turned out, we might go with unfinished floors and have him finish them, and maybe even install them. We'll see, it might depend what the budget allows. But, if anyone in the St. Louis area needs a floor guy, let me know.