Showing posts with label Flooring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flooring. Show all posts
24 April 2013
Last week I was here, beautiful Montego Bay, Jamaica, with my two best buddies.
While I thought that Jeff would enjoy the week alone, relaxing and having guy time, he was actually working away at the attic. I was a VERY happy girl when I came home to this on Sunday.
He says that the flooring should be finished next weekend so I will be painting again before we know it!
28 March 2013
In the sake of honesty, it only took a few days before our nice clean room with freshly finished floors turned in to this.
Here is my confession, I can not bare to part with anything that has sentimental value. So many pieces I have are from my grandparents and great-grandparents homes and I will probably never get rid of them.
I also can not resist a crazy bargain! Those two pink wingback chairs were $5. Not even $5 each, $5 for the pair of them! They are so sturdy and just need some new fabric to make them as good as new.
While I continued to sand away, Jeff was working on the attic. These boards were warped and all different levels so they had to come up. (Don't worry, I saved the boards for another project down the road.)
Jeff laid new plywood down but of course it was not without some difficulties. The actual joists were a little uneven so some of the boards needed to be shimmed. Luckily Jeff has some experience with this so it went pretty smoothly.
Why yes, that is a Duff beer shirt.
Laying the plywood took a weekend a few nights after work and it was definitely worth the time.
Our attic is now ready for new hardwood flooring. Great job babe!
18 March 2013
Refinishing the floors took much longer than anticipated. Jeff woke up early, rented an orbital sander from our local Home Depot and got to it.
The kitchen floors are pine (a softwood) so they were incredibly easy to sand. Most of the top coat and stain came off with the orbital sander and the smaller areas we done by hand.
The living/dining area was not as easy. In fact, it was horrible. First off all the floors in that area are oak, which is much harder than the pine and takes longer to sand (even with a more coarse sandpaper). That wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't begun to see streaks in the wood as we began to sand. We came to the conclusion that whoever refinished the floors before us did so with a drum sander, against the grain of the wood. This resulted in parts of the wood being lower than other areas, leaving the stain trapped in those spots.
We had already come this far and were determined to make it work. So we continued well into the night and the next night.
Copper wanted her own dusk mask.
After 3 days we had sanded all that we could.
We decided to not stain the floors for a more natural look so all that was left was to clean and seal. We wiped down the floors with a damp cloth and they were ready to seal.
Sealing was surprisingly easy as well and Jeff had no problem doing all 3 coats on his own (with 24 hours drying time in between of course.)
Finally after 3 full days of work and 2 extra evenings we were done.
We are by no means experts in this area and we learned a lot along the way but if you want your hardwood floors refinished and are up for a challenge, we say go for it!
As you can see, I've started patching the walls. On to the next project, my favourite, painting!
12 March 2013
We went back and forth over whether we would attempt to refinish the hardwood floors in the living room, dining room and kitchen. At first we thought of course! Why not!? They are this horrible orange-tinged stain and completely scratched up, why wouldn't we?
We then researched the process and realized how much work it would be, not to mention messy. At this point we decided it probably wasn't our first priority.
We were leaning towards leaving them as is but every time we talked about it we said that they would have to be re-done at some point. It only made sense to do them first, before we moved everything in. So the floors are being refinished!
This for me meant ripping out the awkwardly placed cabinet that stood in the way.
You know, this one. The one that almost completely blocked the stairs.
So I went to it with Ruff supervising.
and found that the wall had been cut into to fit the cabinet back an additional inch.
I have learned by now, there is always more work than you think there is going to be.
On a nice note, I also found this:
I've always enjoyed the history of older homes and although this message was only from 14 years ago it was still really neat to find. I said from the start that this home had a good feeling to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(Atom)
Jeff and Shannon
