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.

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

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.)

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!

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.

Floor Help!!

On the agenda for today's lunchtime obsession is our floors. If it weren't for the stark unevenness between the floors that were protected by the carpet and those that were not, I would probably say we should just give it good cleaning with mineral spirits to get the carpet pad glue off and be done with it. But the floor boards are continuous throughout the house, and their uneven height (as well as all the paint splatters from careless POs who knew they'd be carpeting and the raised grain in the areas that received a lot of traffic) means a bit of a sanding is ultimately required.

But how do we finish them?!?!? We love the way the antique vertical grain heart pine has aged into the shellac/varnish coating. Lots of rich colors that vary all over. And it's fairly dark (you can see a pic a couple of posts below)...Has anyone out there had any experience finishing floors like this? First and foremost we want to maintain that overall variety of tone, but we'd also love the floors to be somewhat darker amber...

The pics I've seen of floors that just have tung oil seem too light...Maybe they are just so recently finished that they haven't aged enough yet? Should we stain the wood the very lightest color that we see in the floor currently, and let the rest darken? I'd rather not go with shellac, seeing as how we have dogs, cats and kids and that can be a deadly combo on the floors.

I'm just so confused...

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?