Refinished Floors

Hi Everyone!

Happy Monday loves.  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

So much is happening with the new house, guys.  Last week was crazy busy as we began getting the bungalow ready for move in. The kitchen is half gutted, vendors have been bidding on jobs, new gutters have been installed, and it also happened to be back to school week for Bry and Michael.

When we purchased the house we made a list of things we wanted to tackle pretty much right away.  Most of those things were of the "not-so-fun, but they gotta be done" variety.  Ya know, things like replacing gutters, moving electrical, fixing fences, etc.  There were, however, a few things we really wanted to do that were purely for our enjoyment.  Remodeling the kitchen, refinishing the floors, and painting the exterior of the house were at the top of that list. 

While we made the kitchen a priority, we just weren't sure if we would be able to swing the floors or exterior painting right away with all the other attention the house needed.  After discussing it, analyzing the budget, assessing our schedules, and speaking with a few friends,  we decided that having the floors refinished was an investment we were happy to make upfront. We were able to manage some savings on the kitchen renos, so we were able to have the floors redone sooner than we anticipated. We also wanted to take advantage of the fact that we could have them done prior to move in.

I gotta say this was a tough one for me.  I had no intention on touching the floors.  I loved them in their original state and I was really hesitant to take anything away from that.  At first I wanted to try and tackle the project myself, but after a really good examination of them I determined they truly needed special attention and I had neither the experience nor the time to dedicate towards them.
This was a classic case of DIY vs hire-a-guy, and the latter won out.

The floors are over 70 years old at this point so you can imagine they've seen their fair share of traffic.  They weren't very level, had several areas of damage, needed some patchwork where a former floor heater used to be, had been "repaired with plywood in some places, had quite a bit of wear, and just sorta looked kinda dry and dull. 

 

 

We got 3 bids for the job. Two vendors were recommended to us by friends, and one I sourced on my own.  We chose one who was recommended, and he was priced right in the middle of the other two.  It wasn't the price that got him hired though, I went with my gut.  I trusted him right away.  He was the perfect choice.  Our floors look amazing, and more than that he really listened to what I wanted the end result to be.  I still wanted the character and integrity of the original floors, I just wanted them brought back to life. 

The process took 3 days of work and started with sanding, patchwork, filling, and staining on day 1, the first coat of ploy on day 2, and buffing and final coat of poly on day 3.  Because the floors had lots of ridges we had them sanded on the diagonal first, then with the grain to help even things out a bit. The floors are white oak and the natural wood is just gorgeous.

If you've been with me for a while you already know Im on #teamlight when it comes to hardwood floors. You also know my better half is the exact opposite and prefers dark wood floors.  I wanted to poly the natural wood and call it a day.  Naomi thought the light wood was really pretty, but could see herself tiring of the look fairly quickly so we went with staining.  Our crew also said that stain would help hide some of the deeper impressions and scars that wouldn't be able to be remedied by sanding alone.

I was adamant we didn't go too dark on the floors.  I wanted to try to stay as close to the original color as I could, but I did prefer more of a brown undertone rather than red or orange.  We narrowed the choices down to Provincial (top), Early American (middle), and Special Walnut (bottom).

They really all looked very similar once they were on, but in the end the Special Walnut was the winner.  It brought out the grain beautifully, was the perfect brown undertone, and wasn't too dark.  White oak is rarer to find than red oak and I'm really happy to have it.  It takes stain very well and has beautiful variance among each plank.  We went with one coat of oil based stain and two coats oil based poly.  The first coat of poly is semi gloss and the top coat is satin. I love the look of satin floors.  Not a huge fan of shiny. They used Dura Seal stain and Bona poly.

Here they are all done.

 There's no trace that a floor heater ever existed now, and we had the large dark spot repaired as well.

Im thrilled with how they turned out.  The satin finish is soft and subtle, and in  person they look buffed, not super new, which is perfect. I love that they look as they would've years ago. 

 

The total cost of this splurge was $1810.  It was  money very well spent, and Id do it again in a heartbeat. The sanding process alone is enough to make me thankful we hired out.  I imagine had we tackled them on our own we would've been looking at at least a week of work, and that's not including drying time. We are giving the floors several more days to cure before we start moving furniture in.

 

 

Im off to try and get base cabinets in today. Wish me luck.  Until next time...

 

Xo-Shavonda