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.)

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.

Getting things done...

This last week was pretty productive in terms of getting the kitchen walled up. As I mentioned before, we can't get our final inspection until the kitchen has walls. Being 80 years old, the house doesn't have a square joint in it, so cutting the drywall was quite a process, especially for us amateurs, and there were a lot of little annoyances that kept making the job harder. We had to get a couple of rotted spots in the floor patched. Then we had the issue of an old doorway to what we can only assume was a butler's pantry-- you can still see the trim for the doorway in the laundry/mud room, which appears to have at one time been two rooms: a pantry and a small back porch landing. Anyway, we got that framed in and were finally able to hang the excessively heavy 5/8" drywall:


Yeah, there's some pretty big, gaping seams-- and we're no experts on taping and mudding. But most of the walls will be covered in appliances and cabinets and framed prints...and maybe even some textured paint to forgive the many sins that we and every other previous owner has committed in this room.

In addition to finishing our drywall hanging (which you can imagine involved a lot of cursing and quite a few ruined boards), we got the house cleaned up, made 2 trips to the dump, finished our backyard privacy fence, got one gas line added for the stove and removed a couple that were no longer needed. We'll get the gas turned on today, hopefully, so we can be sure to check every pipe that's been messed with; and we have the start up scheduled for our new heat pump tomorrow-- and just in time, as it's supposed to get wicked cold tomorrow night.

As you can see, we've started the mudding process, and one of my big goals this week is to get the next 2 coats on and sanded. I will also be sanding down the little paint strip left by the removal of the living room chair rail and primering as much of the house as possible. We'll try to get the kitchen floor sanded and the cabinets back in place. We still have a giant gable vent to build. We need to get the house as ready as possible for the inspection and for the big sanding and finishing of the rest of the floors. And then I think we'll be in a position to move in.

But I gotta tell you-- it's been awfully hard to get much done with the outdoors as pretty as this:

There's a ten year old girl in there somewhere...

Our very first project

and I mean VERY first. I left the closing and stopped at the store for a box cutter so I could tear straight into the carpet. First couple of days were spent pulling up the nasty, nasty 20-year old berber carpet and pad. And the pleasant surprise was floors in great shape and with a pretty shellac orange patina. Another couple of days pulling up tackboard and staples and nails. Then our short attention spans moved on to other projects...

Well, now we're back to the floors (kitchen floors are another problem altogether). They're antique heart pine. No knots, or swirly grain. It's very clear and very vertical. And very pretty.

Our first order of business was to price a professional. The main man in town for this is old and cranky. And he'll only patch the floors if he's going to do the whole job start to finish. Including the kitchen it was going to be around $4k. A little outside our budget.

So, Plan B. We have 2 floor furnaces (that are now moot because we've installed CH/A) which are about 2'X3' and 18"X32". And there's a couple of places where they patched with short boards face nailed in a row. I started emailing every supplier of heart wood I could find, gathered quotes. And moved on to another project, again.

Last weekend we tried to measure the area we need to patch and plan out how we would stagger the boards. And that's where I completely broke down. I have visions of big ugly, obvious patch job in the middle of the living room floor. And I can't stand it.

So now we're on the hunt for old registers/grates/grilles that we can put over the old floor furnace space. The grates we have are modern and ugly. And if I'm just gonna leave a hole there, I'd like it to at least be an antique/reproduction pretty hole.

Unfortunately, those are some big holes to fill and we're not having much luck finding anything. Lots of eBay time being put in. Not many architectural salvage places nearby. Anyone out there have a lead for us?