Floor refinishing project update October 2014
Ongoing renovation projects March 2014
Floor refinishing update October 2013
Wood floor project update September 2013
Why I am a teacher February 2013
Home repair and Restoration August 2011
Four years ago I started working on the floors in my house. So far I have two rooms done. All the carpet is out because it was disgusting, the back bedroom and the office have been painstakingly (and painfully) sanded using a 21" belt sander and pieces of sandpaper wrapped around a foam sanding block, as well as refinished using a Bona sealer and polyurethane finish. They both look incredible as you well know from looking at the old posts and the pictures included therein.
The moral of the story is that I am super slow. I have a boredom threshold of something under twenty minutes for hand sanding a floor.
While I was sanding the upstairs landing, however, I had to scrape up a bit of the tile that was covering the master bedroom floor. It is a weird fiberboard sort of stuff
that was glued into place and then had been covered with paint and drywall mud over the years.
I tried cleaning it a bit but it didn't clean up much and then underneath all the gook was a weird sort of pattern. Anyway, I hit the glue with the belt sander because I needed to clean up the edge of the hallway and it came off pretty easily (remember that this term is relative as I have hand sanded two floors over the past four years).
However, there was no way that I was going to do that by hand.
So you may remember my comment from 2011:
"sanding floors is actually not that easy and amateurs routinely ruin perfectly good floors"The author of that quote was specifically talking about using a drum sander on a fir floor. At this point, and looking at what I was facing, I didn't care. Worst case scenario I put carpet back into the room. I rent a drum sander and my buddy comes over for the day.
I'm on the belt sander getting the edges. 40 grit sandpaper all round. Finish with a round of 100 grit, then I smooth out the whole floor with 120 grit in a quick once over and the floor is ready for finish.
Wow. This may be the nicest floor in the house. Didn't require any putty except to fill a couple nail holes near the door. Not sure how long the tile had been down but it left this interesting pattern where the tiles joined.
You can see each tile.
Educational aside from Wikipedia: Linoleum was invented in the 1860s. It was made of linseed oil, and cork and wood powders, with a jute backing. This may well have been linoleum. They pretty much stopped using it in the 50s. I was thinking of the plasticy stuff that they put down in big rolls in the 70s that we always called linoleum. Guess it's like Kleenex in that regard. Anyway, back to refinishing...
Got home from school today and spent about a half hour applying the sealant.
Tomorrow, possibly in the morning before I leave for school, the first coat of polyurethane finish will go down, the second coat after school, and the third and final Thursday morning.
Oh, funny story. See that little rectangular thing on the window sill in the last picture?
Yeah, that's my cell phone. Three hours later (drying time) I went over and retrieved it. Thankfully this sealant isn't one that takes 24 hours or more to dry.
