Floors and Doors
This week the floors were refinished in the two bedrooms I finished restoring. I had originally reached out to have the floors done a few months ago, but there was massive amount of sewer work on my road that prevented the flooring crew from getting access to my street. The work went on for over four months and now the road is finally done so the work can move forward. The work was done by Old School Wood Floors which is the same company that did the floors in the cottage bedroom. Similar to the cottage I’m going with Pro Coat’s UnoCoat oil instead of a heavy polyurethane. I left the cottage as natural, but for the house I’m using a little color on the floors. I go with Minwax’s Early American (Pro Coat uses the Minwax palette). The work takes place over a few days. The first day is repairing the floors and then sanding off the old paint and gunk on the floor.
Sanding the bedroom.
Other bedroom after sanding.
After the sanding, they spray some water on the floors to pop the grain and do some more sanding. The first bedroom gets the first coat of oil while the other floor still needs to dry from the water treatment.
After one coat of oil.
The wood after having the grain popped.
While the floors are being worked on, I’m focusing mostly on cleaning the cottage, but also get in some door work with a final scrubbing of the paint on one side of the door. I do a pass with stripper, then TSP, and then finally with linseed oil soap.
Final stripping of the door.
The third day of floors is the final oil coat to the first bedroom and the first oil coat to the second bedroom.
After the second coat.
Second coat of oil.
First coat of oil.
First coat of oil.
As the floors are finished up and I get most of the cottage cleaned, I do some work on the exterior. I want to paint the concrete on the house, but will need to strip the existing paint. I chatted with the maker of concrete block and he recommended using CitriStrip. To start I work on the flower bed with testing some CitriStrip. The first layer of latex paint basically just peels off.
Rubbery paint.
I also want to do some work on the side as a test. The side entrance has an old rusted light fixture along with lots of peeling paint and an old screen door. I stablized the screen door last year, but I want to try painting the exterior with high quality paint to see how that holds up.
Side entry with rusted light and peeling paint.
We get just a cheap light to replace the existing one. Then I start working on stripping the paint. I use the SpeedHeater along with some chemical stripper and start making a dent, but there’s lots more to go.
New light and stripping the old paint.
Stripping paint.
Under the latex yellow paint on the concrete, there’s a white or cream paint. Due to the rough surface this will probably be a tedious stripping job.
Yellow latex paint.
Removing the yellow paint and exposing another layer of paint.
The last days of floor work involves a second coat on the second bedroom. They also notice a few little dings in the wood that they fill using a wood epoxy. The floors look beautiful and now I’ll just need to install a quarter round to finsh the job.
After the second coat.
All ready to go for quarter round.
Beautiful refinished wood.
