Refinishing Floors

Floor refinishing contractor started sanding the floors. He was able to rough sand the entire downstairs in one day. I arrived on the scene about 1:30 in the afternoon with Meg and discussed floor finishes with him. The natural finish of golden oak is very orange and it actually looks better with the brown tinge of dirt on them. We decided to have a stain added to make it darker and browner. This of course added almost $1000 to the final price. A third coat of polyurethane was added as well.

The floors are a bit wavy through out the house but generally level, no tilts. This is from a combination of settling of the piers and uneven sanding from the previous finisher. A few places have had replaced wood as well. One area was of particular concern and inspection of the underside showed both the main joist and the cross joist had been cut to allow new venting to go up an interior wall. The joists had additional supports added but the work left the floor a bit more uneven than usual. Additionally, there was a spot near the doorframe from the living room to the dining room where the floorboards felt spongy. It turns out some spots, all no larger than 4 inches had no sub floor support.

Small pieces of plywood and in some cases, scrap from the previous work was used to fill out the gaps in the sub floor. It was like doing a jig saw puzzle, only the pieces would be above you so eye protection and a dust mask are essential. Squares of plywood were screwed into existing sub floor to hold the whole works together. Shim stock was essential as well to make the tightest possible fit, either to compensate for varying widths of stock or to shim the sub floor to the new joist work.

Lessons learned while working under the house were, get a kit of stuff in a box and drag it in there with you, getting in and out is harder than just staying there. Also keep a chunk of 4x4 handy to prop your head up like a pillow. Also measure all the stock used, every beam and joist, the old houses used whole inches and the repair work used modern milled stock – ouch.

After the floor guys knocked off for the day, I removed polyurethane from the edge of the fireplace hearth. The previous job had rolled the polyurethane on and overlapped onto the stonework. Paint and epoxy remover brushed on and then brushed off a few moments later with a wire brush worked like a charm. The stone is not a porous as brick. Use disposable everything for this job, as the remover is very strong.