Poly, poly, poly…

If you remember, our house was built in 1960 and all the floors on the main level are hardwood. When we bought the house it was obvious that the floors had seen better days – they are 50 years old. However, after a little bit of hard work we think they can look good for another 50 years.

So this week we continued the floor work in the bedrooms and hallway. For those of you unfamiliar with the work required to refinish hardwood floors, here are all the steps required (this may explain why it’s taking so long to finish!):

1. Remove old finish:
       a. Use orbital sander for majority of room (sand with 24 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor, sand with 36 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor)
       b. Use palm sander for perimeter of room (sand with 60 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor)
2. Remove swirl marks from rough grit:
       a. Use orbital sander with finer grits (sand with 60 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor, sand with 80 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor, sand with 100 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor)
       b. Use palm sander with finer grit (sand with 120 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor)
3. Patch all holes and gaps:
       a. Apply wood filler to gaps and holes (apply filler, let dry (2 hours or more), apply more filler, let dry, apply more filler (for very deep/large areas), let dry)
4. Remove excess wood filler:
       a. Sand filled areas with palm sander (sand with 120 grit, sweep floor, vacuum floor)
5. Prepare floor for stain:
       a. Remove all dust and grit from floor (sweep floor, vacuum floor, wipe floor with microfiber towel, wipe floor with tack cloth (beeswax covered cloth))
       b. Apply pre-stain conditioner to floor (apply conditioner, wipe off excess)
6. Stain floor:
       a. Apply stain
       b. Remove excess stain
       c. Let dry (at least 12 hours)
7. Apply polyurethane (3 times):
       a. Apply polyurethane
       b. Let dry (at least 15 hours)
       c. Sand with palm sander (120 grit)
       d. Clean floor (sweep floor, wipe floor with microfiber towel, wipe floor with tack cloth)
       e. Apply polyurethane
       f. Let dry (at least 15 hours)
       g. Sand with palm sander (120 grit)
       h. Clean floor (sweep floor, wipe floor with microfiber towel, wipe floor with tack cloth)
       i. Apply polyurethane
       j. Let cure (at least 14 DAYS!)

So that was probably unnecessary but when I only have a couple pictures to show for any given week I feel like I have to justify why we look like slackers! You can see though that the majority of the work required with this type of job is cleaning – tons of it!

So we are now finished with the floor in the master bedroom, medium bedroom, and half of the hallway. This still leaves the other half of the hallway, the living room, dining room, den, and small bedroom (we also have to replace half of the floor in there) – not to mention the two staircases. We definitely have our work cut out for us when it comes to floors!

Anyway, enough complaining – here are the finished results for the completed floors (master bedroom, looking from master bedroom into medium bedroom, and hallway/foyer):




In the hall picture you can see that we covered half the hallway with cardboard. This is so we can use the, ahem, lovely upstairs bathroom:


In other news, our friends Kirk and Cat got their new countertop from the same company we used. They offered us their old countertop for our basement apartment so we went over to pick it up on Tuesday evening. Between them (countertop, sink, carpet, house plants) and the neighbors across the street (table saw, lawn sweeper, drywall, interior doors) we sure are getting a lot of free things!

On Wednesday night, our next door neighbor stopped by to chat. We decided that together this fall we’ll tackle the ugly brush, trees, etc. (i.e. jungle) that are between our two houses. It should make the curb appeal of both our houses improve dramatically!