It's crunch time

Well, it's been almost 2 years since the hail storm. That's how long the insurance company gave us to get things finished. We're still not done, so that means a whirlwind of work should be gearing up!

During the last couple of weekends, Adam has been working on a few things. I did my part today. First of all, Adam cut a threshold for the entrance between the kitchen and laundry rooms. I cannot believe I neglected to get a before picture. The closest thing I can find is this--a blurry crop from an even blurrier photo of the oven:


So Adam built a threshold out of pine:


Simon decided to pose with the wood...

Today, I shellacked it.

It's nothing special, but it'll get the job done until we have the time and money to replace the laundry room floor.

Next, we dealt with the broom closet. Before, it was too short and didn't reach the ceiling.



On one side, we added a little strip of wood:

And Adam put the crown trim back up...however, it doesn't really fit. the ceiling slopes, the closet slopes more, and to top it off, the cabinet also bows out.






It was my job to do a little creative caulking:




The splotches are due to wood filler-- I still have to paint pretty much all the trim in the house, starting with that ugly green door in the threshold pic above.

I also worked on cleaning up the patio in anticipation of nice weather to come. I'm ready to be done with the snow, to be honest. Our last big bout of snow and ice was certainly pretty and gave Adam a chance to use his new camera...



...and the puppies definitely had a great time romping in it.




You may be wondering who the little black and white piebald pup is. Meet Robin:


It's a long story; however, the long and short is, we weren't seeking out another dog, but she is a sweetie and is sticking around. Unfortunately, she went into heat pretty much immediately, so she's been a diaper dog and Simon has been a hot mess. She's only about a year old, and I'd guess this was her first heat. We'll be taking care of that ASAP.

And that's about it. Not much else to report around here. It's a long post, but I'm hopeful that the future holds lots of shorter posts with lots and lots of progress. In the next day or so, I'll post some new ideas for painting the house and soon thereafter, my trials and tribulations trying to match the texture on our ceiling.

Good times.

Get to work!

I need help, and you're not cutting it.

You're falling down on the job!


You're supposed to take care of things outside, but it's still raining. Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. I know plants need water, but this is absurd.

I really can't take it much longer. I've taken off yesterday and today to work in the yard, but that has quickly turned into working on the house. It's spring cleaning time, so we've been getting everything spic and span.

However, all this moisture is causing a whole other problem. See, the dog likes his bed, but the fleecy lining gets hot in this weather, so I put a nice cool sheet over it. I went to change the sheet and noticed that there was a bunch of white stuff underneath it. At first I thought it was disintegrated litter (Simon thinks the litter box is a snack bar), but on closer inspection, it's another casualty of the weather:


All the tiny scratches from cat and dog nails created little doors to the shellac underneath; the moist air that gets trapped under the dog bed, plus any moisture that soaks through when he comes out of the rain has caused the shellac to discolor. And I can't just wipe it with alcohol. I tried that-- it's UNDER the poly. I scratched a little off, and luckily, I think it's the clear dewaxed layer that we applied to help the poly adhere that's hazed, so hopefully, I can work on these few boards individually. I plan on rubbing with sandpaper or steel wool to remove the poly and perhaps wipe with alcohol. Then put another layer of dewaxed clear shellac and re-poly.

Anyone have other suggestions? I'm going to try spot treating first and then re-polying the entire board, but I'll redo the whole thing if necessary. Thanks to the blog, we have a very detailed account of what we did with the finish.

I need to re-poly a few boards in the kitchen, as well. They were particularly dry and I think they soaked up a lot of the finish. At any rate, once these things are done, I think I may take up a suggestion left many moons ago to wax the floor. I should be able to just spot wax for a few years if I do that, right? I don't have to wax the entire house every year, I hope... And what do you clean waxed floors with? I don't know. It will make refinishing that much more difficult down the line since we'd have to remove all the wax before screening or sanding, but it might protect the floors underneath, meaning we won't have to refinish so soon...?

It's just such a bummer.

Moments in DIY history

Our best DIY moment-- the point where we really turned the corner and realized we could do stuff! with tools! and make it not look like crap!-- has to be our floors. When we first bought the house, we were so happy to have hardwood under the carpet that we didn't think much about them. We got an estimate to have the refinished and they were **choke** going to cost $4000. That was clearly not in our budget, especially after being told we had to rewire the whole house. No sir.

But getting the estimate did glean some good information; we found out that the floors were heart pine. They were in such bad condition that they had to be redone, but we wanted to recreate the color of the floors as they were under the carpet. They were a beautiful deep red and amber-- we looked into stains and oils and polys. We've since found out the the color was creosote, I believe, mixed with shellac. I only have a few "before" pictures that show their paint and carpet pad stained, scratched, worn down condition. The first two pictures show places in the house that weren't covered by carpet (The dining room and hall were hardwood when we bought it). The third picture shows floor that had been hidden by carpet...

There's definitely some debris that leads directly back to us, but you can see the carpet pad stains and how dark they were originally in the third shot and the worn down places in the previous two.

Turns out the creosote is illegal, I think, and therefore something we can never recreate exactly-- a lot of time wasted, really. But shellac by itself is certainly available. A little research with some of the wood salvage specialists, some excellent advice from Gary at This Old Crackhouse, and a better understanding of the properties of the wood and how each finish would alter the natural characteristics sold us on shellac. And a few good websites with directions on refinishing floors got us started on the labor.

But our most useful tool came in the form of a couple of cowboys that run the equipment rental store by our house. They helped us with the tools and materials, showed us how to use everything, gave us supplies and extra days free when they "forgot" to give us something before they closed-- mostly these were things we didn't know to ask for. Most importantly, they laughed at us when it was clear we had no idea what we were doing and when we screwed up by not removing the wax from the floors before we started. They kept us from taking ourselves and the project too seriously. They were great.

At any rate, many trials and tribulations. I did a couple of the rooms on my hands and knees with a palm sander one board at a time. We were afraid that the soft pine was too thin to handle any diagonal leveling passes with the drum sander. We left some chatter marks. And it was cold. We did this over Christmas.

But the sanding all worked out well eventually...
And so did the shellac...


We had to use regular amber shellac, one coat of it; this was more difficult to get hold of than I thought-- everyone thought I was too stupid to know what I was asking for and tried to sell me poly. Then we had to put on a second coat on of clear dewaxed shellac. And finally a water-based poly to preserve the color and finish.


Love. I don't think I've ever been so proud of myself. Maybe the drywall...Both of these were projects that everyone made a face over. You know, when I told people we were doing it ourselves they made a face, to which I responded by asking if they would like to give us the $3200 that hiring someone would cost. To which they, of course, made another face. We're poor. There was no other option. And looking back, even if we had the money to pay someone, I don't think I would do it. I've become so territorial about the house. I'm not sure we'd have found anyone who would have done rooms board by board or used shellac for that matter. This way, the house is renovated as we want it to be and with just a little extra care because it's ours.

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value.

My biggest deal yet and other tales of the Home Depot

So I've mentioned the bathroom wall cabinet at 30% off...the Moen shower head at 80% off...the stainless steel trashcan duo for $10...our labor day sale granite tile and appliances...our Overstock.com faucet...the chandelier on clearance...We've found some pretty good deals. Well, folks, my bestest bargain so far came along over the weekend.

I almost never shop at Home Depot-- they're a little too expensive for poor little me. But they happen to be the only people we've found that carry our base shoe in the lengths we need. So we trucked on out there Saturday night to stock up on base shoe and grab a few other odds and ends we needed for our tiling project (which will get its own very special post, ugh.) and happened upon...



That's 92 square feet of Rajah slate bought at the reasonable price of $0.49/ft2. And it doesn't stop there. Remember I got a little tip that Lowes would be putting a lot of stock on 50% off clearance? After we got that information, we decided to put the search for laundry room flooring on hold for a while, at least until we had a chance to view the upcoming bargains. But when I saw this big stack of tile, I counted it and found that there was much more than the 77 ft2 that I need. I am NOT an impulse shopper, so I had to "sleep on it." Except that sleeping on it meant that before we even got to the car I decided I'd come back the next morning. So I did. And the flooring guy who loaded it up for me said that there 90 tiles, plus 2 broken ones (there were a few more broken tiles than that, but I can use them for edges if I have to) so he only charged me for 84 tiles. I can't even get nice ceramic tiles for that, and I certainly can't get half decent sticky tile at that price. It'll be more work, but I'm so happy.

Now, on the not so nice side of our trip to the depot...We needed about 20 lengths of base shoe. We see the station with a big sign that says, "CUT IT YOURSELF," in all caps, just like that. We think, "Great, we don't have to find someone to do this for us." Well, let me say that the sign should read, "Cut it your DAMN self." It is a tiny ass little hand saw. That kind of ridiculousness gets old after 5 boards, much less 20.

But the slate made it all ok. And the tiling guy was actually very helpful and seemed knowledgeable-ish. Overall, a good shopping weekend. The actual tiling project, however, is another story entirely.

Yuck!

This stuff is gross...



But it's also miraculous.

See, we have a lot of baseboards that look something like this:



Somebody took off the baseboards and didn't really get everything quite straight when they put them back. This created a number of gaps, up to 1 1/4" between the baseboards and the floor. When there was carpet, it wasn't so much of a problem. Now without it, I can see grass outside through some of these cracks. I like to wave and say hi to the outside when I walk by.

Now. A smart person would simply remove the baseboards and lower them to match the floor and square up with the corners. However, a smart PO wouldn't have done this:



(Excuse the sloppy paint-- we're not done with the trim, yet) So...they didn't bother to remove the baseboards to do the drywall, they just went up to the tops of the boards and stopped. Sigh.

Anyway, just one of the things that has to be added to the list of stuff we can't control. I simply don't have the energy or time to REdrywall the whole house. So we used 5 cans of the expandable spongy goo to fill the gaps. When it dries, we'll trim it and install a base shoe-- actually, a door casing that has a profile mimicking that of the primary baseboards.

I've begun reminding myself that we are the POs for all future owners; they'll be shaking their heads about all kinds of things that we've done out of frustration, exhaustion, and as a consequence of everything that's come before us.

At least now we won't be bleeding money through the floors by running the heat pump with one giant crack running around the entire perimeter of the house.

Back to work

Well, for me at least. Adam finished putting the final coat of poly on the floors this week. I've been in London with my sister, so I just saw the final product this morning. I think they look great. He tells me that there's a crack in the kitchen floor, where some of the boards move. I couldn't see it, but maybe that's just because I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Now, before we move in, we need to:
-secure the kitchen floor boards so there's no more cracking
-put the final coat of poly down on the kitchen floors (It got an extra coat of shellac, so it's one step behind)
-paint the kitchen and
-reinstall and paint the kitchen trim so that we can...
-install the appliances
-begin the kitchen counters and secure the cabinets so that we can...
-begin finalizing the plumbing in the kitchen
-install base shoe over the gap between floor and baseboard and paint the trim in the rest of the house (no more drafts cooling the floors whilst the heat pump works overtime)
-finish packing 10 years worth of accumulated stuff and cleaning 10 years worth of accumulated grime

And I think that's our list for moving in. It's my new year's resolution, I guess. I don't mind working on the kitchen after we move in, but I want to have the appliances available to use. We're broke enough as it is, so we don't need any more excuses to eat out. Replacing the trim is going to be a chore-- the sheetrock is a different thickness than the plaster and lathe, meaning we'll have to trim and shim and jockey the old pieces into place. And with a gas stove and a fridge with a water line hook up, it kind of needs to be done before the appliances are put into place. Or at least, it'll be a ton easier if we do it before. Things like refinishing cabinet doors and some of the countertop tiling can wait. We have a rolling butcher block cart that can suffice as counter for a bit. I was also a little worried about the poly cracking on the kitchen floors, but to be honest, there's so much going on there, that's the least of those floors' problems. We ended up just shellacking over the water stain-- it made it somewhat darker, and it's totally obvious, but I think once we get our island in place and the dark counters installed-- and with all the nail holes and linoleum stains and the runner I use in front of the sink and...well, there's just so many problems, that in the end it seemed silly to worry about the a water stain, albeit a huge one, in an overall "rustic" floor. We'll probably put down thresholds in the doorways to demarcate the kitchen as "different" and "special."

Embracing the Crazy in this house.

Anyway, now that I've had a week away from the house and some general vacation time, and a chance to actually miss this project, I'm ready to get back to it.

Onward and upward, I suppose.

And Happy New Year, everyone!

Polyed ourselves out the door...

Yeah, there's some flaws...ours, the PO's...the PPO's...but I'm pretty in love with them anyway.

That's one coat of 2# amber shellac, one coat of the Zinsser SealCoat shellac (a 2# ultra blond dewaxed) and one coat of water-based Varathane clear satin poly.

We got up on Friday and went shopping to get all our supplies for this...and found that no one in town carries shellac by the gallon. At one point I tried our Pittsburg Paint dealer, and he looked at me like maybe I was little stupid and tried to sell me poly. He even spoke extra sslowly so I'd understand that people have moved away from it and did I know that it yellows really fast.

Anyway, we bought all the quarts on the shelf and it was plenty. And Lowes is doing some deal where you get a $10 off coupon every time you spend $50. So it's worked out to cost about the same as buying by the gallon in the end. Once we've got another coat or two of poly on, I'll feel a little more confident in something like success and I'll tally up my grand total.

It feels good so far.

So far, so good...

Here they are with one coat of 2# amber shellac...

Time and machine management

This was definitely a project that took much longer than we anticipated, much longer than it should have, with pitfalls that could have been avoided. But we were anxious to start. And had no idea what we were doing.

Each machine had upsides and downsides-- little quirks that we'll know how to better manage the next time we tackle a project like this (Ha!).

The palm sander.
It's the best $30 investment we've ever made and I love it. Since it didn't make the swirls that the edger did, it was perfect for the lighter edging, and it's smaller size and lighter weight made it great for reaching places the sander couldn't or tackling angled boards.

It's my hero.

The Best Investment runner-up award goes to the shop vac WITH WHEELS. Put a long extension cord on it, and it follows you around the house while you hunch over to get all those pesky little dust particles.

I've heard a lot of horror stories about the amount of dust that this project creates, but I don't think I was ready. I wore a paper mask, but I still could have built a new bedroom suite out of what ended up in my nose, throat and mouth. I also tried to wear goggles, but they just fogged up with my mask-redirected breath and the sawdust in the air. I tackled the stuff that required putting my face right up to the floor since I don't wear contacts. Adam does, and I can only imagine how painful that would have been...

Having not expected to use the SquarBuff, we didn't do any research. By the end of the first day, my arms were killing me and I could hardly control the machine. It weighs as much as I do, and never wanted to go the direction I was asking it to. We later discovered that the buffer pads get smushed in one or other corner and proceed to pull that direction. Flipping over the pad until it's in the right position, and frequently changing pads, giving them time to refluff, all made a huge difference in control.

Mostly, though, it just took a long time. If we had been thinking, we'd have reserved the equipment, and made a list of everything that needed to happen to each room. We'd have checked to make sure we had some of each grit-- had EXTRA of each, since you can return what you don't use. We'd have worked in shorter spurts where possible. It takes such a toll on your body, that you stop using time very effectively. We'd have tested the floor finish and cleaned the wax. We'd have been more careful with the edger's swirling.

We probably would have risked losing some board to a diagonal pass with the drum sander. It would have saved a lot of hands-and-knees work and a lot of obsessing over how to deal with the chatter-- we probably wouldn't have eliminated it, since our floors are too lose to have secured them all, but it might have reduced it.

We wish we'd known sooner that the weekend special begins Friday night, not Saturday morning.

I keep thinking, "I am NEVER doing this again." And then I go through all the "wish I'd known"s in my head and I think it would be much better next time around. We won't be able to live in this house forever-- there's no room to grow, and we plan to do some more growing...But with both of us working in education and our love of older homes, the chances of us affording a totally renovated house any time in the future are slim to none. So I guess this is our tester house; we've got the time to make mistakes and got enough of a deal that we're allowed to screw up and still come out ok...

Lotsa lotsa sandpaper

I knew we'd go through a lot of sandpaper, but I had absolutely no idea it would be like this.

I'm pretty sure that's not even complete. And there's an awful lot of little 5 inch discs that are hidden under there...

For the middle of the rooms, we first tried sanding with the SquarBuff, but it just didn't have the muscle. That's when we picked up the drum sander to cut through the finish. Adam worked this machine, so he may have some things to add later, but I can tell you what I saw. The 24 grit paper really cut through, but the finish gummed it up pretty quickly. The top layer was melting and reconstituting on the belt in hard, shiny discs. This was another situation in which no one in town sold belts to fit, the rental store had closed for the weekend, so Adam was scraping what we thought was melted varnish off the belts to reuse them.

Then we hit the middle of rooms with 36 on the buffer. This was the end of last weekend.

This weekend, we picked up the edger and Adam went through edging all the rooms with 20 and 36 grit paper, taking care to level out the lip left by the drum sander. Again, we were flying through 20 grit paper, so I hit up the rental before they closed to get more paper. (BTW, the big boxes DO carry paper for the edgers and the buffers, just not screen) I described what was happening and the uy at the store told me that what was gumming up the discs was wax.

Tip number 2: Be sure to check what kind of finish it is. If it's wax, buy the special wax removing cleaner and clean it off. The rougher grit paper is the most expensive, and changing it frequently is a time waster. Just wasteful all around.

Then we hit each room with the palm sander at 40 grit to take care of any uneven boards. We decided not to cut across diagonally so as to save as much board as possible. One room's boards were all angled, so this one had to be done one board at a time by hand.

As for that dip in the floor, we sanded with 36 on the edger and finished with 40 on the palm. It didn't totally get rid of the lip or raised grain, but it did ok and we still ahve intact floor boards.

Then I buffed with 36 yet again, and then hit it with 60. At this point, I realized that the buffer wasn't really eliminating the swirling left by the edger. Adam had to go back to our rental house, so I stuck around over the holiday and wrapped up the round of 60 and took our little palm sander, with 40 grit discs and went around the edges by hand, taking out all the swirling. I also realized that the tack board (or possibly our removal of the tack board) had left a pretty deep scratch in the floor in a perfectly straight line. I sanded this out as much as possible.

Tip number 3: Don't just assume the swirls will sand out. They're a real bitch to get out, and if you can avoid them, do. After we realized that they were going to be a problem, Adam was able to really use the 36 to carefully remove the 20's big whirls and it went much, much faster in those rooms.

We also noticed that the drum sander had left a lot of little ripples, chatter, in the floors that the buffer wasn't getting rid of. I'm pretty sure this is due to the vibrating boards, as Adam had a pretty smooth hand with the drum sander. The shellac disguises a lot of this, but we'll probably see it in the shine of the poly. We'll try a satin finish to get a more waxed look and to dampen the high sheen.

Tip number 4: If you can secure loose boards, by all means do it. If you can get away with just screening and reapplying the same finish that was on before, do it.

Adam came back on Christmas day and we hit the middle of the rooms with 80 and did the edges with 80 on the palm sander.

On Wednesday morning, we returned the edger and they gave us some more screens and a few extra hours. Adam screened all the rooms, while I made a final pass at making sure the swirls were gone. Then we realized we never got rid of the drum sander lip in the kitchen, so I did my best with the palm at 40.

Then we celebrated with burgers and beer.

After lunch, we hit the edges with 120 on the palm sander and I used a carbide pull scraper to get into the corners and around the outlets in our floor.

We vacuumed, tested a few shellacs and called it a day.

Here's the breakdown on sandpaper:

Edging:

For the kitchen, about 8 discs of 20 grit @ $1.50ea= $12

Rest of house,
19- 7"discs of 20 @ $1.50 = $28.50
10- 7"discs of 36 @ $0.82 = $8.20 (we also bought a 3pack of 36 at the big box for about $5)
100- 5"discs of 40 for palm sander. 2 packs of 50 @ $17 = $34
50- 5"discs of 80 for palm sander. 1 pack of 50 @ $17 = $17
15- 5"discs of 120 for palm sander. 1 pack of 15 @ $7 = $7

Middle:

6- belts of 24 for drum sander @ $7 = $42
2- sheets 20 for buffer @ $6 = $12
10- sheets 36 for buffer @ $4.14 = $41.40
5- sheets 60 for buffer @ $3 = $15
4- sheets 60 for buffer @ $5.25 = $21 (from the big box-- always cheaper at the rental!!)
7- sheets 80 for buffer @ $2.50 = $17.50
4- screens 100 for buffer @ $7.50 = $30 (they only charged us for one since they forgot them. I love those guys!!)
5- buffer pads from rental @ $6.50 = $32.50
3- buffer pads from big box @ $7.50 = $22.50

Grand total in sandpaper:

$333.60

plus rental fees ($175)

$508.60

The continued rental saga.

My previous post from last weekend details the first few days of our equipment rental epic.

Well, this weekend we used our noodles and reserved the equipment we needed: an edger and the square buff. We picked them up on Friday evening and returned them on Wednesday morning.

Tip number 1: As I mentioned before, this is something that I cannot believe nobody told me-- local rental stores don't charge for the days they're not open. So I highly recommend, if you can stand sacrificing your holiday time, renting over weekends and especially Monday holidays that get you that extra bit of time. Our place does a "Weekend Special" that's a 2 for 1-- pick it up after 4pm on Friday and return it before 8am on Monday and it's yours for the price of one day.

For the edger and buffer, 5 days rental (they were closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday)., we paid $68 in rental fees-- that's one day each at $39 and $29. A steal!! On Saturday afternoon, we realized that they forgot to give us sanding screen for the final step, and no one in town carries it other than rental stores, so they had pity on us Wednesday morning-- they gave us a few screens and a few extra hours at no charge to finish up. We're trying to come up with more things to rent just because they're so nice to us. I think they like to laugh at us when we leave, and I'm happy to provide entertainment, if that's the kind of deal we get.

Rental fees breakdown:

Edger for one day mid-week to do the kitchen: $29
Drum sander for weekend special (Saturday to Monday): $39
SquarBuff weekend special (Saturday to Monday): $39
SquarBuff weekend and holiday special (Friday to Wednesday): $39
Edger weekend and holiday special (Friday to Wednesday): $29

Equipment rental grand total:
$175

Mo floors, mo sanding.

When researching DIY floor refinishing, I came across a few repeating bits of info-- don't let the drum sander sit, keep it moving...work from a halfway point in the middle of the room...if scared of the drum, use the orbital...wait for each coat to fully dry before putting on another...sand at a diagonal if you need to level the floors... I wanted to know how much this would cost (I'm frugal!), how long this would take. I wanted specifics!

Now, I know every floor has its own individual problems. For example, some of our rooms have been refinished once or twice, then covered with carpet for the better part of 50+ years. Others have been mostly exposed to wear and tear AND refinished a few more times. In one of the previously carpeted rooms, the floor is like this:

Still a little space to work with before we hit tongue, but still not enough to fool around with. However, only a few inches away, we move to another room that's been hit a little harder and dips down quite precariously:

I wanted to know how to sand these floors aggressively enough to get the finish off, but delicately enough to not hit tongue, but aggressively enough to smooth out the ridge and smooth up the grain that's been raised by all the foot traffic.

I also have to admit that this was a much bigger endeavor than I think either of us prepared for. Mainly, it just took way longer than we had hoped, and took a much greater toll on our bodies than we realized it would, which limited our working hours.

Anyway, the following posts will detail the big Xmas present to ourselves.

(A quick reminder that this is about 1200 ft2 of heart pine flooring, with some of the black mastic still on the kitchen floor. A pro quoted about $3800 to sand, stain, and poly, and patch the 2 floor furnaces with what I assumed was newer heart pine, as he didn't specify antique. We received estimates for antique that would have run to more than $1000 for just the wood-- then we'd have to patch them, and here is where we recognized our limitations. We've decided not to patch them at this time, but rather to buy antique grates, or have custom reproductions made. At the very worst, this will cost several hundred dollars, but we won't run the risk of making a $1000 mistake if it looks bad. One furnace is in a very prominent and visible area, so we're being extra careful.)

Little Festivus Miracles

It looks like fate has had some pity on us in the end, and there have been a few minor miracles keeping my glass half full these last few weeks.

Aside from all the progress that we've been making, especially considering the fact that we can only work a few days a week on the house, we've had a couple of financial breaks. The electrical rewire ended up costing well under what we'd expected, as in, several thousand dollars less. Then the CH/A guys called to discuss repairing the cracks in the ceilings that they caused. I realized that they just wanted us to pay, so they offered to knock $200 off the bill if we'd let it go. After drywalling the entire kitchen for about that much, I think it's safe to say that we were well overcompensated for that little annoyance.

We also discovered a really great equipment rental tip-- this is probably something you all already know, but I was pleased to discover that renting things on Saturday morning at our local place gets us a one-day special-- they're closed on Sundays, so they don't charge for that day. 2 for 1!!! I have already reserved the edger and square buffer to be picked up Friday afternoon. I requested online that we have the edger from Friday to Monday; but when they called to confirm, they told me it wouldn't be "due back" until Wednesday since they're closed for Christmas and Christmas Eve. I'm not sure whether we'll be charged for those days or not, and he didn't say one way or the other. I have my fingers and toes crossed that they treat the holidays like Sundays. Either way, it needs to get done this weekend, so now we can take our time.

When we're finished with the floors, I'll be sure to post a breakdown of the cost. We had a floor refinisher give us an estimate-- to do the whole house, except laundry and bathroom (so around 1100-1200 ft2), was going to cost ~$3800. Whatever happens, we just hope we come in under the cost of a professional.

Another little bit of pleasure comes courtesy of my mother and PorchSwings.com. My mother is giving us a porch swing for Christmas and this is the one we've picked out:
The porch swing at my mother's house was built in about the 1880s by her grandfather or great grandfather-- I lose track!-- it's a little creaky, but in excellent condition even when you don't take into account the fact that it gets daily use all year long. Sigh. If I can't have that one, this one will have to do!

And finally, my sister and I leave for England on December 31 to scatter our father's ashes. My dad built houses and renovated most of the major historic homes in town at one point or other, and so it's really a shame that he's not been around to help us with this, since he passed away in February. But we'll get to end the holiday season with him in his and my favorite city in the world.

It truly is a Festivus miracle!

Guess they don't make lumber like they used to.

Yeah, I had plans to buy a piece of select pine to test some things on-- different cuts and layers of shellac, and maybe some Danish oil or Waterlox for good measure. I also wanted to test the sealcoat and water-based poly, as I have heard some reports of crazing in this process...

Well, "select" pine isn't really gonna cut it for my purposes. I know it's a good thing-- they had clearcut a shocking percentage of forest by the early part of the century, and that was a terrible and unfortunate practice. It also means there is nothing I can get at the big box store that compares, and I have a feeling that the newer heart pine that you might find at a good lumberyard is not really comparable either-- at only 50-80% heart, it's just not the same. And the big box stuff? It had maybe 8-10 rings, maybe 20-30 in some of the tighter-grained boards, across a 6 or 8 inch plank. Ours has about 15-20+ rings per inch, as many as 30 in some places. Granted the newer boards are not quartersawn, but this is also a much less common practice these days-- and rightly so, because it wastes a lot of perfectly good wood.

So I abandoned the plan-- I'd hate to waste the time and money testing something that isn't even a fair representation when I could be baking yummy English toffee and stained glass cookies for Christmas!

Anyway, I guess we'll be testing the stuff in a closet while we work this weekend. Results to come.

Today's secret word is..."shellac"

So, with much thanks to Gary over at This Old Crack House and Di at Life in the Prairie Box and commenter Paul and the good folks at NunkProTunk and countless other people who have become accidental shellac lovers, we have decided to give the old stuff a try.

This weekend, we bought a quart of Zinsser Amber shellac at the big box and little can of red mahogany stain for the kitchen floor. After we got the kitchen floor sanded, we chose a few spots that we knew would be covered up in the end and, really, lets face it-- that floor is already so screwed, what more damage could we possibly do? So we tried the mahogany stain first. After waiting 15 minutes we wiped it off and it looked, well...wrong. It showed the grain very well, but in kind of a fuzzy splotchy way. I've heard that heart pine doesn't always take stain very well...the dark color also showed every imperfection, and here is where we were introduced to the lip caused by the drum sander. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Much edging will be required. Lucky for us, these floors have probably never been refinished, so they have a lot of life before we hit tongue. The color was lovely-- very dark and rich and red. In fact, it was exactly what I had wanted on the cabinets before we found that we'd have to disguise some pretty deep black mastic stains in the kitchen floor. Anyway, I'm really not sure what to do here...More to come...

Then we tested some bleach on the gigantic water stain:


You can see it through all the dust floating in the air there on the left. It's about 2' or 3' X 10' and seems to have originated from a washing machine leak in the next room over. Anyway, we tried a few rounds of wood bleach on a slightly smaller stain that came from the sink, and it didn't seem to do much.

But while the bleach and stain were setting, we diluted some of the shellac from a 3 to a 1 lb cut and brushed it on a few boards. I thought it brought out some lovely pink tones in the wood, but Adam thought too light. We tried the 3lb cut on some other boards and applied a 2nd coat of 1lb...Maybe more orange than we'd like, but with wood that varies as much as this does, it's hard to tell on such a small area. The 3lb test area looked an awful lot like some spots of our original finish that remained around the edge of the rooms, and then again, it looked nothing like some of the other spots-- mainly it was a bit too orange and not dark enough.

Admittedly, we were a little frazzled, worn out and in a hurry when we did all this, and so we didn't really experiment like we should have. We didn't try more coats than that, or try different cuts, etc. I have a hunch that building up the layers will really darken the wood...And a little time for the light to hit the heart of the pine will redden it a bit as well; heart pine is photosensitive and gets darker and redder with exposure to light.

This evening, I plan to go to the big box and get as high quality a piece of yellow pine trim as I can get, with as much heart as you can find in modern cuts of wood, another small quart of shellac (I left the other one at the house) and I will diligently try a variety of cuts and layers and combinations thereof, and see if something looks even close to similar.

Truly, I think our real problem is the fact that we had to take up a finish that we loved that took 90 years worth of wear and tear to create. There weren't many gouges or anything like that, but there were a lot of paint splatters and stains and discolorations and bleaching and the carpet padding-- no, no, no, no, no. That carpet padding glue was stuck for real-- I was eventually able to get it off with a light scrubbing of Oops, but it had stained the wood, and if you scrub too hard, the Oops bleaches the finish (even though the label says it won't). At any rate, it meant we really needed to sand and I'm afraid we'll now have to wait 90 years to get something like what we had...but at the rate we've been going, I think we may be right on schedule!

The weekend update

I am henpecking this post due to the fact that all the knuckles in my right hand are swollen to twice their original size after spending all weekend on the floors. My back and entire left side are also a bit of a mess. Just goes to show how out of shape I am.

These are the culprits.


And this is the fiasco.

Earlier in the week, Adam spent the better part of a day on the kitchen floor edging. It took so much time because it had all that crazy black stuff still clinging to a good portion of the floor. We then both got up bright and early on Saturday morning and made the trip down to our local equipment rental. Turns out they had already rented the edger. So they talked us into the square buffer under the assumption that it might do the edges and corners as well. So we made our way to the house and got to work. But the buffer simply lacked the power to strip the varnish. Back to the rental store.

This time we got the drum sander and a bunch of rough grit to do just the first pass on the floors; we still planned to use the buffer for edges and the more refined passes. The drum sander worked like a charm and on we went. I wrapped up the 36 grit passes in the kitchen while Adam took the drum sander to the rest of the house. Then I started following behind him to edge. That's when we discovered that the buffer doesn't have enough weight behind it at the front of the machine to do edges. Also worried that we were going to run out of belts for the drum sander. Rental store was closed. Back to the hardware store. Returned with 60 and 40 grit paper for the 5" palm sander. The 40 seemed to do an ok, if slow, job on the edges, so a trip to the big box store for a jumbo pack of 40 grit discs, gatorade, shop vac bags, the prospect of belts that fit the big sander, and beer. No belts that fit.

That process proved such slow-going that we stopped and reevaluated our strategy to get the most effective use of time and money. We were going to go ahead and do the rooms with the buffer up to 80 grit, return everything Monday; rent the edger and buffer again later in the week, edge, feathering into the rest of the floors, up to 100, and then screen everything with the buffer. But then we noticed how deep the lip is from the drum sander along the edge and decided it might be best to do everything as prescribed. This wasted much time.

At any rate, there were more trips to the store, more hemming and hawing over what to do, contemplation of trouble spots, and finally, we ended up doing the middle of all rooms up to 36 grit. We'll be edging and completing the sanding part of this ridiculousness next weekend. Hopefully.

Here's where we ended:


We also sanded the kitchen up to 80, and did parts of the edge to 120 so we could test some shellacs, wood bleaches, and stains. The gigantic water stain, as well as the super thin section of flooring in the dining room, and other sundry quandries are best saved for a later post, as is the entire issue of shellac...

Best part? When I returned the equipment this morning, I found out where the edger had been all weekend: at my realtor's house.

Little love affairs.

You know how when you meet someone, and you're so excited by all the possibilities of this person-- you think, "I want to know everything about you!" And then the other person does that-- they tell you everything about themselves...And well, um, hm...That wasn't really what you expected or were looking for...or really know what to do with.

And then you go into rationalization and reassurance mode to yourself and everyone around you-- "Things really are going to be great-- we compliment each other, you see? I like his flaws. They're character." And then you reach the "Oh, shit." stage. Not a panicky "oh shit!" Just a reality check and realization that a lot of niggling things are going to have to be dealt with. Doesn't mean it's not going to work. In fact, getting through this stage and still being excited can mean the start of something great.

Apparently, renovating a house is a lot like this. "These floors are so beautiful; they're just dirty! A good scrubbing, sanding, a fresh finish-- they'll be gorgeous! Has that part been sanded? It has? They'll still be great-- you wouldn't want a house that didn't have any character, would you? Did you sand it with the 20 grit? Oh. Shit."

Welcome to my weekend.

Does it get any better than this?

Adam got started with the edger, and I am just so pleased with the way this is turning out. I'm sure I've probably just jinxed the whole project, but seriously...considering the way this entry looked not so long ago, with its 3/4" worth of ugly flooring and that horrible black mastic-- I'm thrilled!

Its not all good news. There was a thin black strip of linoleum that went around the room as part of a border. My understanding is that this stuff was heated up to adhere to the floor. It looks like maybe that particular little strip burned the floor a bit during application:
But you know what? I can't even be bothered by that. At the very worst, we'll put a dark stain on this room only-- it does look like the POs may have replaced some boards with oak strip and there's definitely some water damage on the other side of the room, as well as some slightly more prominent burn marks where the fridge will sit. I just don't want them stained so dark that the beautiful grain-- the reason we went through all this and didn't just put down a new floor-- is hidden. But I'm certainly ok with rustic. In fact, I'm ecstatic for rustic. I was so ready to throw in the towel with these floors about half a dozen times through this whole process. Adam kept me moving, though. And now no one's happier about this than I am.

And on another kitchen note...Ta-da!
Upper cabinets! They look better in person. And the two on the right aren't fully installed. We'll have to shim out the one on the far right to bring it even with the others and to compensate for the extra space created by replacing the plaster with drywall. The black and red stuff on the solid masonry wall is old backsplash mastic, soon to be covered up by...this is yet to be decided, actually...

A possible floor solution?

Literally-- we think we've found a recipe for a shellac mixture and poly coating that will come close to mimicking the way the floors look right now.

Late last week, I stumbled across Goodwin Pine's "professional" section for their website. Goodwin Pine, www.heartpine.com , is apparently the leading company with regards to antique heart pine-- salvaged and river recovered. When I was still shopping for heart pine to patch the floor furnaces, I emailed nearly every company I could get an address for who might possibly sell the stuff. A few were able to give me estimates, many of whom weren't able to guarantee the clarity of the wood. I've mentioned that ours is extremely vertically-grained with no knots whatsoever. Any variation there would stand out like a sore thumb. Anyway, the companies that couldn't help me for whatever reason-- don't do orders that small, don't sell heart pine, don't sell it in that particular grade-- all directed me to Goodwin. And when you see their website and brochure, you see why. They really are a company dedicated to this one, very particular, largely unavailable (new, anyway) species of wood. They have a very specific grading system and a lot of suggestions on the maintenance and restoration of this kind of wood.

Anyway, their "professional" section, which I had not seen before, suggested using a 3lb cut of dark dewaxed shellac, thinned and used as a wash. They claim that this will provide a bit of instant ambering. Then coat over it with a water-based poly. Supposeedly, the shellac dries pretty immediately (it's an alcohol base, after all) and as long as it's dewaxed, it shouldn't interfere with the poly.

Now I've never used shellac for anything, so I'm tiptoeing into some unchartered territory for me... Any tips or hints from anyone who's done this would be greatly appreciated!

As for house progress, we happily made none this weekend ;-). Sunday was going to be devoted to a family gathering, so we decided to take the weekend to catch up on things at our rental-- cleaning, some light packing, a few trips to Target. Our cats couldn't believe their luck to have us both in the house for 3 straight days, a clean living room, and boxes galore for snooping and napping. It was like heaven for everyone involved.

We got walls

In fact, we got some pretty good walls, if I do say so myself. Mudded, taped, and primed. My dad built houses when I was a kid, and luckily I picked up some drywall skills through osmosis-- I sure didn't get any by paying attention. The job's not perfect and we still only have the primer coat on, but I don't think we're going to need to do any texturing (touch wood). We also got the lower cabinets moved into place. (Apologies for the blurry pics-- I forgot to put new batteries into the camera, so I had to use the phone.)


I have to give credit where it's due-- I'm a big fan of the metal reinforced inside corner tape. We bought it by accident at the hardware store, but it turned out to be the perfect material for one particularly wonky corner. Some previous owners, many years ago, tacked a modular broom closet onto the end of the pantry. I wasn't a perfect fit, so once the plaster was gone, there was about an inch wide gap between the wood broom closet and the corner stud, with nails spanning the distance at an angle...we had to bevel the drywall and then I did some fancy footwork with the tape and...voila! a corner with only a ghost of a seam. We also ended up with an outside corner that was essentially too big for normal metal corner beading. I used the paper-backed metal instead since there was nothing to screw into...So far so good. I couldn't find any installation instructions, so I just slathered on a ton of joint compound, pressed it into place and got rid of the excess with a trowel-- I basically treated it like any other taped seam. We'll see how well it stands up to the refrigerator door.

Then, after mopping up the drywall dust, we got to see the floors for the first time-- we'd never mopped up the water-soluble mastic, so it was quite a nice surprise. We did a little bit of spot sanding under the lip of the cabinets-- the water damage is pretty obvious, but I think a darkish stain will hide a lot of problems. Then we sanded part of the cabinets-- the facing is indeed solid wood, and a careful pass with a belt sander does wonders.

Still not sure what to do about our living room walls-- we took the chair rail off to open the room up a little (it didn't seem like original molding) and apparently there had been a lot of painting around the rail over the years. There's now a lip of built up paint. We sanded it down some, but the walls have been textured at some point. I guess we'll try to match the texture. Time to start sampling!

Still a lot to do, but we're making progress.