The Floors

We were so happy when we moved into this house to find out that the original hardwood floors were still there. Underneath layers of crap, mind you, but still there! This holiday weekend, we rented a sander in our quest to rediscover these floors (since we want to take the whole downstairs back to hardwood). You saw in a previous post what the entryway used to look like (layers of linoleum). The layers of the old flooring were held down with 1 inch staples, all of which I had to pull out of the floor by hand. So, that also meant that each one of the HOLES from the staples had to be filled prior to sanding. What a pain!

Here, Jeff loads the sandpaper into the monstrosity of a sander. All of the light spots which you see on the floor and holes which I had to fill one-by-one with a putty knife and wood filler.

Here is the entryway after one pass with the sander. It needed a lot more work, but was still encouraging!

The dining room had this weird-textured seafoam green carpet in it. We left it down while we worked on the ceiling and walls, to protect the floor from the mud, but now, it was time for it to come up!

While pulling it up, I discovered yet another layer in the house! At the top of this picture is the carpet pad, and at the bottom is our kitchen vinyl floor. In the middle is some weird, snake-skin like vinyl, which is apparently under the current kitchen floor, which we found out is sitting on the same wood floor that runs through the rest of the house. YAY!

In the 40s and 50s, if you were going to lay carpet over a hardwood floor, a protective tar was painted onto the floor first. This would protect and seal off the hardwood. So, THIS is what we saw underneath when we pulled up the dining room carpet!

It took Jeff pass after pass to get this crap off. It would first melt, and then it would turn green, and then it would turn brown and melt onto the sandpaper, and then finally it would come off!

Left behind after the drum sander was done, were little spots all over the floor which the drum sander just cound't get off.

So, I got to use our 5 inch orbit sander and sand each one out by hand.

Also, around the edges of the room was about a 5 inch wide swath which the drum sander could not reach. This meant that I had to take the orbit sander and get everything back to the wall cleared. I literally spent 6 hours doing that, and because the tar melted onto the sanding discs, I had to change discs every 18 inches or so. We went through a 50 pack of them!

Finally, all stripped and ready to stain!

TA-DAH!!

Don't they look AWESOME! Jeff tack-clothed them tonight, and then I stained them before bed. We are VERY proud of the results!!

Project Costs (for the floor only, in the dining room and entry way)

Sanders and sandpaper $120

Stain $19

Staining sponge $6

Tack Cloth $0.89

Polycrylic Sealer $24

TOTAL COST $169.89