Monday, April 20, 2009

Absolutely Floored

Here, as best as I can show you, is the dark and dingy floor of MY library as Cheri and I found it in 2006. If you enlarge the pic you can actually see where the people used to polish and wax AROUND an oval rug. Now being a bit of a lazy bugger myself I will not criticise anyone for not moving the furniture and rug out of the room to polish the floor properly because I cannot truthfully say that I would not do the same thing!!

The above is a picture of the wooden flooring in the house as it looked after I sanded away about 80 years of wood floor wax and oil based polishes and grime from the oil fired furnace. Who knew that there was gorgeous wood underneath? It seems that the first two rooms in the house, the posh rooms or, entertaining guest rooms, were floored with really nice Oak planks/strips about two and a quarter inches wide, and the back rooms or living quarters were floored with cheaper pine wood. The dining room and bedroom must have had grade 1 pine and the kitchen and hallway had grade 2 or 3. I am sure you will be seeing pictures of pine floors on here sooner or later.

Below are 2 pictures of the same floor after fine-sanding with 220 grit and coating with a clear urethane finish then waiting 5 days and repeating the process. After kneeling on this floor only a foot away from the details whilst sanding and coating it is a real surprise to stand up, walk away for a cup of tea then come back to see the big picture with a fresh eye. It just made me smile(well grin really) and say "WOW".



The next three pictures show the floor 1 week later after a third sanding, very light, and another coat of clear urethane. I can't help but say that I am very impressed with myself but I know that a real carpenter/floor guy would have probably done a 10 times better job






Well there you go. Only four more rooms and a massive hallway to go. Good thing we have a 10yr plan. Oh by the way did I mention there were holes in the floor that needed to be fixed before i could even start sanding and coating. All part of the adventure I guess.








2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow Dad! Those floors look amazing! Now fill it up with books! :-D

Beryl, Melvyn, Christopher and Rick said...

WOW, what a magnificent job, I can remeber what the floors looked like, and Paul you CAN be proud of what you have done. Be careful of your back and knees, that kind of work is hard on them,(yes this is a mum talking!), my children will always be my children!!! SOooo enough already. Keep up the good work. Mum.