Unearthing a Wood Floor

 

Last weekend we sanded our little hearts out, refinishing the floors on the second floor.

On Monday, we had sanded the guest bedroom floor, using only a belt sander and an orbital sander. Who knew that would suck so much? Ok, anyone who’s ever sanded down a floor, or a door for that matter.

Thomas and the orbital sander in the guest bedroom (to be)

Half and Half Floor – with a bit of sanding disk

Taking a break from the guest bedroom sanding

Thomas cutting out the bad wood

Putting in the new boards – see the shims?!

Before

Little Buddy – our drum sander for the day

working away at the glue – grrr.

Dave, the shop vac and the drum sander (Little Buddy)

Thomas and the belt sander

My friend the orbital sander

knot of power

A well-deserved break on our front porch

Pretty, huh?

My homemade kneepads

Look what we did! I can’t believe what we did!!!

But, once we’d done that room, and saw how pretty the floor was, we talked about it and decided to go ahead and do the rest of the wood. Thomas has been fairly set on having hard wood up there anyway, and this was a good bit cheaper than getting a new one and laying it atop the existing floor.

And what a time that old floor’s had.
The house was built in 1940, and since then, this floor has had two coats of gray-ish blue paint (well, two kinds – about four coats) and some green shag carpet.
The kicker was that someone decided that gluing carpet to a wood floor was a fine idea. Ok, I still can’t figure why anyone would paint a wood floor either, but it may have had something to do with the aforementioned glue.

We had to replace some boards that had had some previous water damage (really, I helped! Mostly by vacuuming and then placing shims beneath the new planks, but still. . .)

So, Friday our awesome friend Dave came over and helped us sand away. We rented a drum sander (which looked like a cousin of the old Electrolux that my best friend Sus had in college) and got really, really dirty.

We almost finished Friday, but decided to call it a night rather than hurt ourselves. The next morning (and afternoon) Thomas and I finished up the corners, Thomas went over the entire floor with a really fine grade of sandpaper, we cleaned and cleaned (and cleaned) and then put a coat of polyurethane on the floor. Stinky, but that part went pretty fast – much faster than wiping down walls, then floors, then floors again. ..
But look what we did!!

Thomas’ mom came over the next morning and helped him put another coat of poly on the floor (I was at work). I can’t wait to see it close up now that it’s dry.
Kelli and I peeked in this afternoon, but it’s still curing.