Stairs Sanded, stained, poly

Ohhhh those were the days.  Here's what I did to the stairs.  The biggest problem with refinishing hardwoods on the stairs is you can't use that giant machine that is so effective.  I had to hand sand them all with the orbital sander and by hand.  Booo!  But they're done now :)

 

That's my grandfather - he's helping.

 ew

This is them cleaned off and sanded

Then stained

Then Poly put on - so far 3 layers... I need 6 - you'd be surprised how hard it is to find 8-9 hours where no one would be using the stairs or the hallway...

UPDATED: Office Floors Sanded... stained

And poly put on:

Bring on the awesome floors.  Here's the thing about these floors - they're incredibly light.  So the stain that I mixed for the living room floors didn't work at all not a match - not even close.  So I tried to mix it darker that wasn't right, then mixed it again darker... still nothing.  But the darker can of stain was too dark.  So basically I ended up dipping my brush in the dark stain, then the light stain and then mixing the color each brush stroke at a time.  Hopefully this doesn't end up looking bad.

You can kind of see the lightest parts where it was dry.  You're supposed to wipe them down with water before you put the stain on.  I think it's supposed to "open the grain" er somethin...

Refinishing Wood Floors

One of the rooms that was added on to the house when I believe they added the second story in the late 1930's is what should be the true master suite. It's got a full bath and the room is huge with his and hers closets. My grandfather was using that as his "shit" room. Meaning when I was cleaning the house and he would say "I can't throw that away!" I would say ... "fine... put it in your room."

Eventually - one afternoon when he was at work - my mother and I went in there and started pitching things in trash bags. With the help of my mother and my friend Josh we liquidated the room in three trash bags and a porch load of stuff. We hid the bags of stuff in the car and dumped them in the bowling ally parking lot trash cans.... Then I pulled up the carpet to check out the floors underneath. Other than the fact that some dumbass spray painted the floors along with the baseboards... so that sucks. And the carpet pad is so old it is pasted and glued to the floor in a really awful way.


another shot of the room after we painted it

And the process of the floors...

Notice the carpet pad glue and residual carpet pad. It turns out... you can't sand this off. Didn't know that. . . .probably something everyone should know. Don't try to sand the glue and carpet pad off the wood floor.

Also - this is probably a good time to mention that the sander I got was probably not the best sander. I was expecting the mother of all sanders, right? I was ready too - doors on, towels under the doors, windows open. I was ready. Turns out.. this sander is something that doesn't really sand it very hard - its like three hand sanders in one machine and it had a vacuum on it. The vacuum was a cool feature but I can't help but wonder if I had the super industrial sander if it would have taken me a lot less time and sand paper pads which .. we spent probably over $100 on.

So ... trying to sand off the glue and carpet pad makes your sandpaper look like this:



So if you're getting this... you're doing it wrong. Turns out the glue gets heated and melts onto the pads - then the glue cools and then your sander sticks to the floor! Oh yeah... it was a happy learning experience. Then you end up with this stuff on your floor:



So we go and get this stuff:


And you put it on and let it sit for a minute or so and while its still wet you take a little putty knife and scrap it all off. Wear a mask... open all the windows. This is essentially paint thinner - except it doesn't remove paint... I still had to sand that off with the hand sander along the base boards.

Things get a little better:


And then keep sanding.... a whole lot... and sand more and more and more


Then sand more and more and you end up with this: