Our house has oak hardwood floors in all of the upstairs, except…..in the kitchen. It has linoleum over fir wood floors. Of course, we want all wood, so below is the process of taking up the linoleum and refinishing all of the wood floors.
October 11-15, 2008
The first step was to remove the linoleum. We borrowed a “mutt” from Jeri’s dad Richard and Holly began the process. Unfortunately, when taking up the floor, I failed to get far enough under the linoleum and also get the tar, felt, and glue that accompanied the linoleum. Since the floor underneath is fir and is soft, I didn’t want to gouge it, so….I paid the price by not getting everything in the first round.
Now that all of the linoleum was removed, it was time to tackle the tar, felt, and glue. Oh boy….that sucked! After spending two days of getting almost nowhere on the removal, I gave up and rented a hand belt sander with 35 grit paper. I had reserved a vibratory sander for Friday, October 17 so that Craig could spend the weekend sanding ALL of the hardwood floors. So….I had to get this stuff up. Although it was my first time using a hand belt sander and it took a little practice and only a few “ridges” in the floor, it did a great job. It was hard to get under the cabinets and get the tar, felt, and glue so those will need to be done by hand. Once this is all refinished, it’ll look great !
October 18, 2008
Craig rented a sander and went to work on sanding the floors. The oak floors throughout the house turned out really good, and the kitchen fir floors turned out good also, but it was still a bugger to get the tar and glue out of some of the corners. Since the bathroom is tile, the floors that are being worked on are living, dining, hallway, and two bedrooms.
October 19 -21, 2008
Since the kitchen floors still needed a bit of work, Craig set about to finish the oak flooring throughout the house and would continue to work on the kitchen flooring between “drying time and coats”. The next steps in the process to finish the floors was the damp mop, seal, 2 coats polyurethane, sand, damp mop, and 2 more coats of polyurethane. This is the end result of the oak hardwood floors throughout the house!
October 21-23, 2008
Now that the rest of the hardwood floors are finished, Craig has been focusing on the fir floors in the kitchen. We’ve gotten them sanded down and the tar out of the corners. Since the wood is so light and fir is a soft wood, we that being in the kitchen the floors will show wear and tear. Because of this we decided to stain the floors a darker color (almost walnut) and then put on some extra coats of stain and polyurethane. So once again….sand, damp mop, seal, damp mop, 2 coats polyurethane, sand, damp mop, 2 coats of polyurethane, sand, damp mop, and the final 2 coats of polyurethane.
