Re-vamp your wood floor

I thought I would offer you all something a little different today.  As I have previously mentioned, my in-laws are on a journey to move out to Ohio (cue the trumpets!).  Recently, they have been slaving away attempting to stage their current home in New England for selling and tackled a project on their floors that turned out beautifully. 

As you will learn quickly, this isn't a project for the faint of heart, but check out the results!

I would say this is well worth the time and effort put into it.  What better way to enter a home than to be greeted by the sparkling newness of vintage wood flooring.

With that, I bring you the first guest post at A Fraying Memoir from my father in law, Ron Kochanowski:

Weekend Floor Redo

Hello to all of you readers of A Fraying Memoir, it's an honor to be asked to be a guest poster here!  It probably wouldn't have happened though, if I weren't her father-in-law.  Need I say that I'm blessed to have a son with such good taste?

Several years ago, on one of the many trips that we made driving from Massachusetts to Cedarville, OH while Ben was in school, Lynn and I had a conversation that went something like this:
Lynn: I think that we should move to Columbus.
Ron: What? Why?
Lynn: It's obvious to me that Ben and Ashley are going to get married.  And Ashley being as close to her family as she is and being from Columbus, well, when they get married that's where they're going to live.
Ron: So, what happens when Sara [our daughter] gets married?

Little did I realize how that conversation would come to pass some four years later, except for the Sara part.  So, during the past year I've been working at transitioning positions from Business Manager to Software Consultant.  On January 3, 2012 that was completed.  The company that I am now working for actually wants me to live in Ohio.  So, as one thing leads to another, we began the process of earnestly preparing our home for the market.

One of the largest jobs that we've had to accomplish is to strip and refinish the hardwood floors in our living room, dining room, and hall.  These are the steps that were taken to bring a new sheen to 85-year-old wood.

This first step only applies if you have 4-legged pets: find a new home for them for the weekend.  Yes, this is a 3-day job.  Don't kid yourself into thinking that you can do it quicker.  And once you start putting down the new finish, you don't want paw prints showing when it dries.  So, get rid of the animals.  Lynn went to see her brother for the weekend in (coincidentally) Cedarville, MA.

Need I state the obvious?  Next you have to clear out the rooms or spaces that are to get refinished.  We took all of our living room furniture and put it in Sara's bedroom, and all of the dining room furniture went onto the back porch.  That left just Lynn sitting on the bare floor Friday night, but it was a fitting end to the first day!

Saturday morning, with coffee in one hand, waving good-bye to Lynn, Stanford and Delaney with the other, I began to do the real work.  A trip to the professionals at Home Depot set me up with all of the materials that I'd need: The sander (or Beast as Ben called it) was supposed to take the old finish off down to reveal what would look like new flooring, buffing pads, sand paper in 60 and 120 grits, 4 sheets of each, and a polyurethane application kit which contains one lambs wool applicator pad and a mounting head for the pad, one can of mineral spirits for clean-up, and finally, the polyurethane.

A word on polyurethane.  There are two types, oil-based and water-based.  The water-based finish seems to be more of a topcoat.  It dries much quicker, which means that you can get three coats done in one day, and be finished.  The oil-based finish interacts with the wood better.  The oils penetrate and bring out the patina of the wood better.  It takes three times longer to dry and greatly extends the time needed to complete the project.  Normally you would plan to apply 3 coats of the finish, but I found that Minwax makes a 2 coat, oil-based product and went with that because I wanted to enhance the patina of the wood and needed the project to fit within the time constraint of the weekend.

Back at home, everything that might be susceptible to dust needs to get covered.  Pull out the sheets and start tucking in what's left standing.  I put one covering the entryway into the kitchen, because Lynn told me to and I really didn't want to have to re-clean the kitchen.

Now it's time to break out the Beast.  There are various sanders available.  There's the drum sander, which you really need to be careful with because it's very easy to let it stand in one spot too long sanding out an nice rounded groove in the floor; there is a disc sander that supposedly works very well, but doesn't get into the corners as close; and there is an oscillating sander with a rectangular shape that does get pretty close in to the edges.  My Beast was an oscillator.  I used a 60-grit paper first, sanding the entire floor.  Then I used the mineral spirits on a rag to wipe up the dust.  After that one sanding I liked how the floor looked, so I used a single 120-grit paper to smooth out the sanding marks, wiped the dust clean again.

Wanting to give some time for the air to settle before starting the poly-finish, I packed up the Beast and took it back to Home Depot.  Because I had it less than 4 hours it only cost $35 instead of $125 to have it overnight.
One more wipe down and I was ready to put on the polyurethane.  Clean is one of the keys here, even though I don't think that it's possible to get it clean enough.  Another key when working with oil-based products is ventilation.  I learned this with the first coat.  I was pretty loopy by the time I'd finished getting coat one done.  Put this down like you're painting, but you don't want to apply it too thick, just a nice even coat. 

Then wait...

... and wait...

and wait.  I really wasn't expecting it to take six hours to dry, but it did.  That might be in part to it being winter and the temperatures being colder, but I don't think so.  Plan for a long dry time!

Sunday morning I got up to a pretty dry floor.  This next part doesn't really take that long and is very beneficial.  Lightly sand the surface of the previous finish to knock down and bubbles or dust that might have settled the previous day.  Then carefully wipe up the dust with clean water-damp cloth.  Open the windows (lesson learned from the previous day) and lay down the second coat.

I did not return for a full six hours after putting down the second coat and it was dry to the touch.  But it wasn't hard, so no furniture yet.  I waited a full 24 hours for that!  Here's what the finished product looks like. 

By the way, we signed the paperwork last night.  This house is now on the market.  Say a prayer for a quick sale.  No, wait a minute, we don't have anywhere to move just yet!