Sanding and finishing floors

 We needed to sand the master bedroom floor since the carpet had been ripped up so we decided to do the living room and stairs too to eliminate some of the dog scratches in the wood. First up was moving all the furniture out.

Then the floor was sanded to remove all the old paint.

 First coat of urethane.

 Third coat of urethane.

 Refinished stairs

 Refinished living room

Master Bedroom Carpet Removal

 When Kristen's parents were visiting, her dad ripped up all the carpet in the master bedroom. It is the only floor left in the house that needs to be refinished.

 It looks like it has less paint on it than other floors did so it may be a little easier to finish.

 We also bought new cast iron vent covers to match the rest of the house and will put those in once the refinishing is done. Tyler is just waiting for a warm weekend so he can have all the windows open when he urethanes and Sam and Kristen will need to take a mini vacation for a few days to avoid the fumes.

Bathroom Floor - Planing, sanding and first coat of urethane

 So staying true to the old nature of our house, we decided to hand plane the floors... Actually, the space was just too small to justify renting a commercial sander. The planing worked very well at taking down the uneven boards. Luckily, the flooring we laid had never been refinished even though it is over 100 years old so we have a lot of thickness to work with and Tyler was very careful in laying it so the boards were pretty even to start with.

Once the boards were fairly even, he went over the whole thing with a sander, taking the stain off the newer flooring and smoothing things out.

And then it was time to put the first coat of urethane on - it soaks up and dries quickly and the floor will get darker and redder with every coat. I think it will be a nice color match to the existing flooring.

Laying bathroom wood flooring

This weekend we installed the fir flooring in the bathroom. The first step was to remove all of the previous plywood and linoleum flooring. You can see in this picture that most of the old floor has been removed and there is still one strip along the tub. You can also see where the toilet was taken out and the air vent is located.

 The next step was to remove the strip of plywood right up to the tub face. This was a time consuming process with the chisel. The new floor will go right up under the front face of the tub.

All of the old floor has been removed and cleaned up. You can see some of the original ship lapped 1" thick fir subfloor. At one point when the bathroom was added one section or subfloor was replaced with plywood.

To help finish the edge a single piece of flooring is fitted along the face of the tub. This will help getting all of the ends to finish well. This piece looks like a different color because it was sanded before it was put in place. 

At this point we ran out of flooring. I thought that we had enough but we were not even close. Kristen and I went down to the Seattle Restore and picked up some more on Sunday. Obviously the vent has been recut in this picture and the new cover has been put on.

New (old) flooring purchased, and kept laying.

 Trimming the pieces around the toilet flange.

 All finished up now. Just needs some sanding and a couple coats of urethane.

 

Floor Urethaning Upstairs

 We got the first few coats down on the newly sanded floors and the stairs. Will do more next weekend but it's nice to see the shiny wood and the darker color coming out.

Refinishing upstairs floors

Stu and Tyler worked on ripping up the carpet in the upstairs hallway and guest bedroom. They rented a sander and started taking off some of the paint layers. Progress is slow and there is more sanding to be done with a rental sander then all the finishing by hand.

 

Removing Carpet in upstairs hall

In preparation for reworking some of the doors, hallway and bathroom Kristen ripped up the carpet and padding from the upstairs hallway. Here is a picture of the hall before the carpet was removed.

Here is the hall with the carpet removed and the pad still left.

And finally, the original floors.

Last to take out are all the tack strips and staples.

More work on the stairs (Bottom Part)

This week both Kristen and Connie worked on stripping the steps, getting new paint on all the kickplates and urethane on all the treads. At this point most of the paint has been stripped off the treads but there are still a large number of pits that have to get picked out one by one using some of Kristen's dental tools.

All of the kickplates were painted up with the trim color before they were scrapped or sanded.

Once the first coat was dry it was scrapped, filled and sanded.


Then back with the small brushed to get the paint into all of the corners of the stairs.

And here is what it looks like once they all are all painted.

Finished Floors!

We finished sanding and sealing the floors last week. The process took a little longer than we thought it would at first.

When we originally rented the sander I was concerned about the sanding pads being too aggressive so I bought mainly 80 grit pads. When I tried these on the floor they hardly made a dent in the existing floor finish (4 layers of paint and one of varnish). So I went down to 60...then 36....then eventually 24 grit. I think this is all due to the fact that the fir for the floors was all cut over 100 years ago and came from old growth trees with very tight growth rings.

After finishing up with the rented random orbital sander I had to go around the edges and the lower boards in the middle with the hand sander. This process took another couple of days for the two rooms. We are planning on putting in a 3/4" quarter round at junction of the baseboard and floor so I didn't have to get all of the old finish off right up to the baseboard.

Following this, I had to replace a couple of boards that were broken in the middle of the floor (I used a couple of boards from the coat closet) and use some plugs to fill holes in the floor.

And after all of this...three coats of oil based polyurathane with hand sanding between coats. It is amazing how dark the floors are, almost look like mahogany!