Living Room Pt. 3: The Floor – Our 1800's House

After the necessary cleaning & painting of the room, it was time to tackle the floor. And it was here in this room that Gavin spent most every day of his Christmas break, 2017 on his hands & knees pounding in nails, sanding & then sanding some more. Because of the condition of the floor, it was especially challenging to remove every last bit of that dreaded red paint. However, the end result proves well worth all of the backbreaking work to get there.

Detailed below is the progressive process of restoring the 210 year old poplar wood planks back to its natural, beautiful state.

Gavin with his new tool – the miter saw. While this was not used for the floor, rather the re-hanging of the cove, this photo illustrates the poor condition of the floor before we began this endeavor.

STEP 1: PREP WORK

To reinforce many of the boards that had come loose over the years, Gavin sank nearly 5 lbs. of spiral shank finish nails into the floor, not including all of the nails he bent in the process. Because of the age of the floor, the stony wood was so impenetrable, the nails could hardly puncture it. In addition, he & his hammer also set every last original steel cut nail that was protruding from the planks. I had the duty of cleaning out each individual 1/8″ gap between the boards. Starting on one end of the room, then scraping with a thin putty knife between the cracks down to the other end which resulted in unearthing 200 years worth of hair, dust & dirt that had formed like thick, grubby caterpillars. The shop-vac was used then to suck up the loosened debris. The gaps were cleaned this way at least 3 more times before this project would come to completion.

STEP 2: SANDING THE EDGES

In order to use our recently purchased floor sander, the perimeter of the room had to be sanded with a hand sander first. This was one of the most tedious & difficult steps in the process because it took so much time to simply uncover the wood from the red paint to begin with, nevermind actually sanding the wood itself. While using a paint stripper would have worked to remove the red, we had decided from the start that we didn’t want to use strong chemicals on the floor. Instead, we spent a week’s worth of time on our hands & knees with an orbital sander, belt sander or dremel working meticulously to abolish any evidence of red paint.

It was during the frustrating and laborious task of hand sanding that I took solace in doing handstands instead.

STEP 3: FLOOR SANDING

This was all Gavin’s efforts here with using our floor sander for the first time, beginning with 36 grit pads. He recalls plumes of dust billowing up from the wood and covering every square inch of the room with a smoky white haze. The process of sanding, then using the shop-vac to remove the remainder of dust from the floor was completed multiple times & with varying levels of sanding pads including 80 and then 150 grit. Each day that I’d arrive at the house to see the progress he’d made, I’d be filled with awe & delight to find such beauty in the grain of the wood that had been disregarded for so long.

STEP 4: POLYURETHANING

By the end of almost two weeks worth of sanding, the day had come when we decided the floor was ready to be finished. Before we could get to polyurethaning though, it had to be as dust-free as possible. The room was cleaned thoroughly with the shop-vac, walls wiped down & then the floor surface was gone over with tack cloth to remove any remaining particles (of which I received a giant splinter in my hand that Gavin removed gracefully with his razor knife.)

The video link below is a snippet of the meticulous process of polyurethaning the floor. This was done 3x to protect the surface as well as to enhance the character of the wood. No stain was added to alter its coloring.

https://youtu.be/opemzKrI-V4

The floor was complete & we began moving in furniture April of 2018.