Wednesday, January 20, 2016

amber waves of pine

The floors in the nursery/future master bath have been done for a month or so now, and they managed to become the longest single project in working on the space.  Longer than running the plumbing.  Longer than building (and unbuilding and rebuilding) walls.  Longer than stripping the woodwork.  Longer even than restoring the windows.

Yikes.

The story of the floors began when we bought the house.  Despite the absence of working roofs, plumbing or electrical, the bank decided that they also required us to finish the floors on the second floor under the terms of the 203k.  In this room, the floor was a mix of layers including vinyl sheet flooring, cat piss, 9 inch asbestos checkerboard tile, cat piss, two layers of marble contact paper, cat piss, black linoleum adhesive, cat piss, and the original faux grained painted border.  The cat piss issue is important since it almost caused us to walk away from the deal.  While the whole house was fairly saturated with urine, this room was by far the worst since it had the most exposed bare wood.  The first few inspections the weather was quite cold and wet and the smell/moisture wasn't obvious.  However, on the final walk through it was warm and dry and we could immediately see the wet pervading the floors - we thought we must have another leak from a mystery source until I put my nose to it....




So, we stripped the floor, did a quick sand and many soaks with the various urine destroying solutions and three coats of waterlox (not sufficient on pine, just enough to make them look doneish for the bank).  Now the intention was to be able to come back later, scuff sand the floor and put of a few more coats of waterlox.  The reality is that my roofer decided I was not capable of sanding the floors on my own and did me the enormous favor of coming in with his edger and sanding the edges - gauging them so badly that fixing them to be level with the rest of the floor would take off half the sandable wood.  So that's how they sat for 3 years.

At 8 months pregnant the room was done enough for me to revisit the floor, so I conned my friends into carrying the big ez sand  machine up the stairs for me and joyously got to work.  Only to stop 10 minutes later after realizing the machine had a metal burr on one of the sanding pad bases that etched curlicues deep into my pine.  I may have cried.  I swear it wasn't the hormones.



The manager at Home Depot did what he could to help the crazy pregnant woman, and ended up giving me over $100 dollars worth of sanding disks for my handheld Dewalt because I decided I was going to do the floors BY HAND.  I almost finished them too, and then Toren arrived two weeks early.  

After a month and a half of recovery I was ready to revisit the floors.  The room had been locked up, covered in sawdust, with our closet tarped off (yes, we had no access to our closet for two months when we had planned on a week).  Finished the 80, did the 120, spent two days dental picking the gaps between the boards and vacuuming and was finally ready for Waterlox 2.0.


It went down beautifully.  And there is much evidence of the whole menagerie memorialized in the floor... The first two coats are Minwax red oak and dark walnut (8 oz each in a gallon of waterlox), with three more coats of straight waterlox.  And given I was doing this with windows open in early December I think I owe global warming a big thank you!

17 comments:

  1. That looks un-flipping-believable. Please tell me the cat piss is gone.

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    1. Masked, but not gone. The section that is now the laundry had the worst of it, which is one of the reasons I put down tile. But I could clearly smell it once I had sanded off the waterlox in here. So kudos to waterlox, it also seals in urine...

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  2. Amazing color on those pine floors! And your "helpful" contractor sounds like ours, though thankfully we were able to keep them away from the wood floors.

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    1. Ahhh contractors, they can't ever be content with sticking to what they're good at (he's a brilliant slate roofer). I dread having to fix the other three rooms he botched, but at least now I know it can be done...

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    2. Just so you know misery has company, I went off to work one day, leaving a gutter guy installing new gutters, and came home to find that he had sawn off all the ends of the rafters, a major architectural feature of my Craftsman house. I would have killed him, but that wouldn't have brought the ends of the rafters back.

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    3. Holy hell, in this house he would have remained alive just long enough for us to sue him, and then ended up chopped into bits small enough to fit in the cistern....

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  3. It's amazing after all that you didn't have to replace the floors. That is an amazing transformation. Congratulations!

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    1. Thank you! It's sort of a miracle they turned out as well as they did, and a testament to my stubbornness I suppose. I've seen people pull them out for much, much less.

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  4. It's stunning! I've never heard of waterlox, although I guess I don't need to know about it now, do I? LOL

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    1. Nope, I think you can officially retire from learning about more esoteric home improvement products!

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  5. fan freakin'tastic!

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  6. I am SO excited for you!

    My 1894 house had cheap pine on the first- and second-floors. Over this was wall-to-wall carpeting, sewn together in narrow strips. The very acme of luxury for the era.

    About 1950, oak flooring was laid down.

    So, I have a great old house...with boring floors!

    On the bright side though, no cat urine!

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    1. We too had cheap oak that was put down when the house became a boarding house in the 20's - it replaced the (what I imagine to be) glorious wall to wall in the library and dining room. We actually have a rooms worth of carpet from another house that will hopefully get installed in the distant future. What I really wish is that we had more than just a landings worth of wood carpet (amongst many other wishes I suppose)!

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  7. I'm so very impressed with your work. Bless you for hanging in there. I will add you to my favorite blog list so I can keep in touch. Our Queen Anne Victorian house restoration took 7 years, and there are still several big jobs left to do. It never ends. Best wishes from us, Jon and Mrs. D from Wisconsin. www.1893victorianfarmhouse.blogspot.com

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    1. I've followed along with you for quite a while, it's always a nice reminder to see there's a light at the end of the restoration tunnel!

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  8. Congrats on The baby! We are on our second renovation with two toddlers. Just moved into an 1882 Italianate in Minnesota. You are an inspiration.

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    1. A renovation with two toddlers? You must share your secrets! Congratulations on the new house!

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