Our first goal in home restoration was to refinish the floors to their original glory. We had refinished a floor before in our life and thought this was going to be a breeze. We were wrong to say the least. There was probably about 100 years of dirt, varnish, paint and stains on the floor throughout the house.
Armed with 34 grit sandpaper, I took my first swipe at the floor. My piece of sandpaper gunked up with the junk from the floor while only clearing off about a square foot of floor in about 5 minutes time...this wasn't going to work like we thought it was.
After discussion with our friends Libby and Eric, we discovered that we needed to get the junk off the floor as best we can prior to sanding it down. This involved spreading Stripper (essentially a form of paint thinner) on the floor, letting it sit for 20-30 minutes and then scrapping off a layer of oozing, jelly-like gunk. To say the least, this was the most disgusting house project to date.
The guest room after pulling up the carpet. You can see the white spots on the floor. We believe that someone sprayed pieces of wood or something with white paint or plaster without bothering to put down a barrier to protect the floor.
The living room. You can see a very well worn spot in the middle which looked as if it never received a coat of varnish back in the day. They probably had a rug to go in the center of the room to cover the spot they didn't varnish.
The main bedroom, once again with white spray spots on the floor.
The dining room, note the dark spot in the middle of the floor where it looks like a rug sat and they were too lazy to varnish the entire floor. No complaints really because that section of the floor was easier to sand.
The space right outsdide of the bathroom had tons of wear and tear from years of water and traffic.
Eric scraping off the floor using the stripper.
Allie using the edge sander.
The dining room, mid way through its sanding.
More sanding and vacumming.
Eric sanding down the main bedroom.
The dining room after a good amount of sanding.
We eventually put on three coats of a water-based polyurethane with a satin finish to protect the floor. It looks fairly nice, but we don't have any pictures of it because we were quickly rushed into another project - the bathroom! We covered up the floors to protect them and haven't see too much of them since completing the finish. We'll post up some photos when we uncover them.
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