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

Layers

So while I was gone in NH this past weekend, Jeff decided to start on what we're HOPING will be one of the less involved projects on the house- the dining room.

The plan for this room is:
* Remove drop ceiling and go back to 10 foot ceiling
* Remove wallpaper
* Remove paneling
* Remove carpet
* Refinish hardwood floor
* Patch plaster walls
* Decide on drywall or plaster ceiling, and finish
* Install beadboard wainscoting around the room (oak preferably, to match trim).
* Install new light fixture to provide more light and accentuate high ceiling
* Choose new drapery hardware and sew new valences or panels.

border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5231659714084871522" /> Before- lots of wallpaper and paneling


Before- the other side of the room


The drop ceilings taken down


Removing one of the layers of paneling (4x8 foot pieces)


Lots of construction adhesive left on the walls.

Well, Jeff started with the drop ceilings and took them all down while I was gone. Underneath was an additional 2 feet of headspace which had been covered up. The celing had peeling paint on it, as well as an area that shows a water stain. We're anticipating that this was from an ice backup on the porch roof, sometime before it was replaced 8 years ago. The ceiling is plaster, with a 1/8" wallboard on top of it. We still need to decide whether we're going back to plaster for the ceiling, or if we're going to have it drywalled.

We spent tonight working on the walls. Talk about LAYERS! There is light wood colored paneling, on top of wall paper, on top of dark wood paneling, which is then CONSTRUCTION ADHESIVED to the 1/8 " wallboard, which is somehow adhered to the plaster. We had to remove window trim and pull up the carpet around the corners of the room to get this stuff off the walls. As you can see from the pictures, the construction adhesive remains.

One cool thing, is that for whatever reason, the baseboard trim was not nailed directly to the wall. Instead, there are strips of newspaper which were placed between the baseboard and the wall. It's funny reading excerpts from the Grand Rapids Press from May of 1981. I'm going to save some of the clippings for my house restoration scrapbook :-).

I found a product which we can get at a dealer in Kzoo, which will allow us to paint it on the wallboard, and then apply plaster directly to that (rather than the normal 3 step plaster process, which you have to let dry for literally at YEAR!). So we're thinking we're going to replicate the look of the restored living room, and do plaster in there. Another fun skill to learn :-).

So far, the cost of the room has been:
$16- Ceiling primer
$2- dust masks
$65- new light fixture (originally $169- we got it on clearance at Lowes :-)