Getting the floors ready for refinishing
The last main piece to the bedroom work is having the floors refinished. Like last year, I’m not going to do this work myself, but will have a great floor craftsman I found who appreciates the old wood floors. He did an amazing job on the bedroom and also was the only person I found who’d consider using oil to finish the floor instead of the standard polyurethane.
Before the floor gets refinished, my work is to remove all of the VCT tiles on the floor. I learned my lesson from last year and figured out the quickest way is to use the SpeedHeater to soften up the tile rather than trying to scrape everything with brute force. Not that there isn’t work involved with scraping, but applying the heat first makes the job a lot easier. As I make my through the floor, I’m lucky that the condition in this room seems better than the other bedroom. Looks like less loose planks and areas that need repairs.
Scraping away the tiles.
I’m not a lefty, but had to portray one for this shot.
After some hours of scraping all of the tiles are off and the room is now ready for refinishing. I still have to make the hatch for the ceiling, re-hang the doors, hang the molding and shellac the woodwork, but for the most part all of the main work is done on the room.
Original floor covered in glue and paint.
The other pressing task is to get all of the shiplap painted before it gets installed in the bathroom. The bathroom progress is moving forward nicely and I won’t be down next weekend so I want to make sure I get all the planks painted so I don’t put a hitch into the bathroom work. I have 60 planks and knowing how I paint, I ‘m assuming 2 coats of paint.
Last weekend I wanted to start painting but our heating system went out and it seems like every time we come down it’s always the coldest day of the week. I painted a small test area using the linseed oil paint we mixed up and in the cold it didn’t seem to be drying very well, so I passed on starting painting assuming the heat would be fixed when I returned.
It was fixed during the week, but on Thursday I noticed the temperature dropping on my remote heating app. By the time I arrived, the system was totally dead again. There’s a problem with air getting into the lines and once it builds up, the water can’t be pushed up to the 3rd floor where the heating unit is located. Luckily the HVAC tech is able to walk me through bleeding the system which lets me get the heat back rolling for the weekend.
Once I get the house back up to an acceptable temperature, I go to work painting all of the planks.
First coat of linseed oil paint.
I spread the work out over 2 days. Not being used to oil paints, the stuff gets crazy coverage and also adheres to everything. Once it’s on your hands it’s not coming off unless you use linseed oil soap. I make my way through the 60 planks twice and still have some paint to spare, which is good. Karen was nervous that I didn’t buy enough paint and wouldn’t be able to match colors if I had to mix up a 2nd batch.
The painted shiplap planks.
