Mistake #247

I did it again. Kathy did a beautiful job restaining Adam's floor. No blotches whatsoever, BUT there were some significant swirl marks in one place from the sander which I thought I could fix by just a little touch-up sanding and restaining. Doesn't work that way.

Here are some before pictures of Kathy's floor and then Adam's floor.

Kathy's room 

Adam's room. You can't see the swirl marks.
They are along the far wall.

Below you will see where I sanded the floor and re-stained and re-stained and re-stained. That area just would not take up the stain like the rest of the floor did.

Now what? Re-sand? I'm afraid I might have to. This floor is driving me crazy. 

I finally got a decent camera. I've been using my iPhone which really takes pretty good photos, but I'm thinking I might need something a little more versatile so I got a Canon Powershot G12. It's really quite impressive. Since my family is going skiing next week, I think the camera will come in handy.

Believe it or not - it's still the floors.

I sincerely hope I am not using the same title in May - Still the floors. Ok, so this part of the floor looks pretty good. I was quite disheartened about an area in the middle of Adam's room so I have to sand the floor AGAIN to get this finish off and redo it.

I was so excited yesterday because the floors were ready to stain. I vacuumed for about 2 hours, then used a tack cloth on all of the floors. I was ready to go.  I poured the stain in the roller bucket. Then  I got out the floor finish applicator (basically a mop handle with a fuzzy block) to apply the stain. Then I start laying the dark walnut stain on so thick it was almost black. It was beautiful. My spirits soar because this floor is going to look good when we finish. Then I hurry and wipe of the stain. This is the tedious portion of staining. My arms protested, but MY floor is going to look GOOD. But wait, what is that in the middle of the room? I see 2 large blotchy areas right in the middle that significantly darker than the surrounding floor. It does NOT look good. This is not beautiful floor I have imagined for so many weeks. This will not do.

So I am back to sanding it off. I know what I did wrong. I tried to be cheap with the tack cloth which costs $1.84 per package (2 packages would do the entire house). So I made my own just like they say on the internet, but it raised the grain in 2 areas and there you have it - blotches on my beautiful floor. I also applied way, way too thick a layer of stain and did not wipe it off well so it's not dry yet. It's supposed to dry in 8 hours.

That's this week's floor story.

Here's a picture of the snow still on my driveway and the area that was next to my car. I am pretty sure we got about 8 inches of snow at my house. What is really remarkable is how much is left 5 days after the snow.

The snow was truly delightful. Kids will be out of school this whole week. Monday is Martin Luther King Day so they will be off Monday as well. It's almost as good as Christmas holidays (I still think of snow as all kids do in the south. We love it.)

For the next week or so it will still be the floor

Kathy and I went over to the Lenore house around 12:00 noon and started working on the floors. I am getting up the nasty old paint off the cement floor in the mudroom while Kathy is making the wood floors in the bedrooms beautiful. She has gone through 24 grit - many, many times, then 36 grit x 2, then 50 grit x 2. Our plan is for the last grit to be 80 since we are using semigloss polyurethane rather than gloss on the floors.

We spent yesterday evening bleaching the floors trying to get out the stains in the living from floor. I think this is the best we can do.

This is after hydrogen peroxide from the drug store,  deck brightener (mild oxalic acid), then 2 concentrations of oxalic acid.

You can tell from our previous posts that we've gotten somewhere, but it's still not great. We are going to go with our decision to use walnut stain. We'll try to paint it a little darker around the stain to make the stain merge better with the rest of the floor.

If that doesn't disguise the dark spots, then the floor just has to have this much more personality.

We hope to stain on Tuesday or Wednesday, then polyurethane. It's very exciting to be getting to this point. It's the reward for all of our prep work. I really didn't think I had the patience to do it this well. It helps to have someone else equally as invested in doing it right.

Oh, I forgot. I've got to get my brother to help me take down the door to Kathy's room because it actually scrapes the floor. We've got to cut a small amount off the door before we do anything to her floor. And I've got to get him to show me how to apply wood putty in the nail and staple holes so they won't show so much. At best that will be done Tuesday.

The weekend plan is to install the bench and cabinets in the mudroom so I have to have that floor done this weekend as well. That floor is only about 5x5.

It's still floor time

Sanding floors. I have been sanding floors for days. Kathy has been sanding floors for days. The only good thing about that is that we actually LIKE sanding floors. Well, not the only good thing. The main good thing is that the floors are actually beginning to take shape and look good.

Kathy talks about how everything conspires against her and she can't get to the sanding. Today she was upset because they up and moved the Home Depot and it took her over an hour to find the store with the 24 grit sandpaper. Fortunately, the store only moved in her head and once she was re-oriented, it appeared. So we have 4 more sets of 24 grit sandpaper. We hope we do not need that much. It's time to more on to finer grit sandpaper.

Here are some before and after photos of the floors. They actually look better than the photos because the camera accentuates the shades in the wood.

This is one area of the stained living room floor. This floor was under a sheet of vinyl flooring.

And here is after we have sanded like crazy. We've also used a little hydrogen peroxide to try to get the stain up.

Much better, isn't it?

The floors look so much better that we are re-thinking the plan to stain it with Minwax "Dark Walnut" stain. I'm still thinking dark will look good in the house, but now we feel like we have a choice at least. We originally thought we couldn't get the floors to look anywhere near this good and that we would have to stain them dark to obscure the stains.

We'll keep you informed about the little house. Here is a shot of the house in the first ever (for me) Christmas snow.

It's floor time

I've been on a mini-vacation for the past few days. I went to Salt Lake City for my sister's birthday. When I left Greenville it was 16 degrees, but it was in the 40s when I arrived in Salt Lake. It barely got below freezing in the valley the whole time I was there. And no snow in the valley either, but there was very nice snow in the mountains. I was able to ski with my brother-in-law one afternoon.

You would not believe the lift lines. Impressive, huh? No one in the lines except someone else with a 1/2 day pass waiting for the magic hour of 1:00 pm.

We got 1/2 day passes at Alta so we had to wait about 5 minutes before we could get on the lift. It was very beautiful up there. 

The ironic thing about my return trip was that it was snowing in Atlanta before I got my flight to Greenville and we had to wait about 3 hours for the plane to get deiced. My brother told me that it has been colder in Greenville, SC than it has been in Yellowstone. Crazy weather, huh?

Anyway, back to renovation of the Lenore house. My current job is to do the floors. I am supposed to sand, stain, and apply polyurethane. I have been delinquent in my duty. My first frustration was that the 24 grit sandpaper gets clogged with the old floor varnish in about 5 minutes. Then I kind of injured my knee pushing the sander around the room. How does that happen? It's really easy for me. Basically I just extend my knee and push against it and boom! I'm hurting. 

So now I am wearing a knee brace all the time to remind me not to fully extend my knee and push against it. I worked at the house tonight and actually got somewhere with the floor in Adam's room. Here is a before picture of the floor.

Now here is what I've done tonight.

The varnish still clogs up the sandpaper, but I bought a lot more sandpaper. I still think I need about 10-15 more packages.

This is the U-sand with 4 brand new sandpaper sheets on. The floor looks much better doesn't it? 

We're going to stain the floor walnut with a satin water-based polyurethane. I think it will look good.

Kathy has done a great job priming everywhere. We have been somewhat indecisive about colors. We were going to put a grey called Rocky Bluffs (we call it Rocky Butts) in the mudroom, but decided that it really was too grey for a tiny room. We don't want white because it is a MUDROOM, the room the dogs go in and out of to go to the bathroom, rain, snow, ice or shine. We'll have to choose soon because we've got to get this house done. It needs to be livable (is that how you spell it?) as soon as possible.