You know, I just can’t get over how cool it was to stuff those crapets in the Tall Timber’s dumpsters. Especially now that I’ve seen them absolutely packed and I know that it’s several days away from trash day. Kudos to Sara for the thought. However, back to more pressing business. The revampification of the hardwood floors in the new house.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out who would want to destroy awesome looking hardwood floors. I’ve talked with many people and they all agree that whoever had the bright idea of covering up the floors was a complete and utter sadist. Especially when you cover it up with something like this awful crap:
Thus, the battle continued. Phase 2 was to shave the old floor and re-urethane them. Before we could do that though, we needed to get all of the staples and carpet tack pulled and cleaned up (Thanks to Micah, Katy, Joe, Joe, Heather, Sara, Mom, and Grandma in no particular order). Using this crack squad of savvy staple pulling fiends, we were ready to commence operation “Got Wood?” by 1500 hours. From here, we rented two sanders from Home Depot(r) and gave it hell for the rest of the night. Now something to note about the sanders we used. There was one that was designed to pull up and 8 inch strip and another handheld one that you run along the edges. I have no complaints about the one you pull along the floor; however, one that runs around the edges doesn’t really work and the best way to make it work is kind of like doing toe touches, but trying to keep a 30 lbs weight from just barely touching the ground.
Although it was relatively difficult to get the hand sander to do what I wanted it to, it did leave me with a new look. A little on the old side, yes, but somewhat refined I would have to say.  |
The majority of the floors got sanded and they look pretty ficken sweet. We didn’t do the one upstairs bedroom because it’s just too far gone to save (stupid bastards and their putting glue down imitation tile on hardwood floors). The living room didn’t get entirely finished because we had to take the sander back to home depot; however, Sara is working on finishing the remaining portion today. After that, we’ll come back through with the buffing style sander and get out all the fine lines and then it will look pretty fricken bad ass. Below is the best picture of the floors that I have, though this one room still needs a little work. A lot of the photos are kind of sketchy because they had to be taken without the flash (damn saw dust). Clicking on it will take you to the gallery where the rest of the images are.
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Joe says:
I can complain a little about the pull-across-the-floor sander: my neck was stiff for the next day and a half from staring at the floor the whole time, and my back and legs a bit sore from pulling the thing backwards for nigh on 6 hours. But it was good fun making the wood look good! I like working with metal a lot, but there’s nothing quite like a wonderfully polished wood floor…
13 February 2006, 4:09 pmWyatt says:
And I do have one lesson learned. Always pull in the same direction as the flooring, even if you can’t get everything up. That’s what the buffers are for.
14 February 2006, 1:25 amJoe says:
Did we mess something up?
14 February 2006, 9:43 amTimothy Mecklem says:
Ok, so I was planning on remaining completely silent in shame since Amanda and I didn’t make it to the hardwoodifying party. We were at the church and there was so much to do on Saturday when we planned to come over that there just wasn’t enough time to make it there and back for the coffeehouse. I made the call to not go, and all future anger looks should be directed at me. Sorry, Wyatt.
Anyway, your floors look like they are in better shape than our old house when we went through the same process of rip, flip, trip, snip strip and pimp (uh… ok, the rhyming ends at the last one). I almost went against the grain two or three times and dad warned me about doing that. It seems to etch weird patterns into the floor and rip up the pieces of wood that sit higher along the wood’s grain. We must have rented the exact same two sanders, because I had the same complaints about the muscle aches and the uselessness of the circular “edger” sander.
We did two coats of polyurethane after the sanding and staining. It was great, you can pretty much ignore the whole “ventilation warning” on the side of the can. It’s better in a closed room with lots of candles.
14 February 2006, 11:16 amWyatt says:
We didn’t mess up per say … more like we could have done better. It still looks 1000x better than the crapet that was in there. The previous owner has stopped by and all she ever says is, “Wow….”
15 February 2006, 12:32 am