naked wood

Work has been kickin' my butt lately, so the precious few minutes I take each day to _not_ work, I spend exercising (in an attempt to maintain my sanity) or working on the house instead of blogging about it. Oh, then there is all that time I "waste" reading houseblogs, but who's counting.

So, let's catch up...

Here was the guest room just before I left for the lake over 4th of July weekend:

primer white

I actually had to put two coats of Kilz on the walls. Never had to do that before.

Here it was mid-late last week after one coat of paint:


And another to display the variation in color that light, digital cameras, and our lovely computer monitors cause:


Split the difference and that's the real color. A little bird described the color as, "It looks like a pair of green khakis that you bought at jcrew and wore over and over again until the color was all faded out." Perfect! Warm and cozy like a favorite pair of pants.

Now on to my junior-high-joke-of-a-subject. Armed with some helpful articles from Hometime and the Wood Flooring Manufacturers Association, I set out to tackle the floor. I have no idea why refinishing the floors intimidated me so much. I suppose it's because I was imagining clouds and clouds of dust for days. That wasn't the case at all! I was all geared up when I started: fan running in the window, double layers of sheets outside the door, goggles, mask, earplugs, everything. I even put on real shoes which, for me, means business. The only safety equipment I used through the whole process was the earplugs (oh, and the shoes). The rest seemed unnecessary because there was hardly any dust with the drum sander.

Before:


During:

My buddy the drum sander. I managed to break it during the first cut. No big deal, just that the switch stopped working, so I had to plug/unplug to start and stop the thing. (shrug) The piece of advice everyone mentions with the drum sander is to make sure you're moving when lowering or lifting the drum. I had no problem with it at first, but on the third cut I had trouble at the walls when I switched directions and it started making small ruts. They weren't major at all and I was able to smooth them out, but I don't know why I had problems with the final, it being the finest grain and all. I was probably just getting tired.


All done (with full bag of sawdust) and ready to go back to the evil orange! Now, on the dust front, the edge sander is a different story from the drum sander. It _did_ kick up quite a lot of dust, and I don't like that thing at all. I'd read that you're not supposed to apply pressure because it will cause swirl marks that are difficult to remove, but I felt like I had to apply half my body weight just to get the thing to go where I wanted it to go. It wanted to run all over the place. So, I was applying pressure, and yes, it did create swirl marks, that yes, are hard to get out. I realized how bad they would look in the end when I was testing out stain in the closet and passed over one. Ewww! I basically ended up re-sanding the entire perimeter by hand and still didn't get them all, but I tried.

And now:


ooooohhh, aaaaaahhh. preeeeettty. I couldn't figure out how to do the last strip of floor other than apply small block, wait, wipe, back up, repeat... and I didn't want to do that for fear of creating splotchy bits, so I'll just go back and do the last strip tomorrow. That will also give me a chance to touch up some light areas. I haven't decided on exactly what I will put on after the stain, but it seems most everything recommends buffing after stain and between coats of poly, etc. Have you other floor refinishers done this step? I hate to rent the silly thing for two days and have it sit idle most of the time, but I'm also not going to run it back and forth to the store. Let me know what you think if you've been there.

So far, this is the most rewarding project I've done in a loooooong time. Can't wait til it's done!

MIT too

Thanks for the cool link, Road to Amherst. I love being a statistic. You should too.