I’m a long way from finished, but this is going to be a big…make that HUGE job, and there will be pictures along the way, so I’m starting now lest I end up with so many they never get posted!
04-28-19
I finally decided I’d had enough of the ugly brown carpet. I never liked it, and after five years of Miffy pulling at the seam that ran right through the middle of the room, it looked bad enough that it had to go. I knew there was unit block parquet under it, but other than peeking at one corner and at the edges of heat registers, I had no idea what condition it might be in. I did not let that stop me. 😀
Starting at the easiest spot to lift the carpet, between my office and the front room, I began to pull.
At that point, I discovered that there had once been rubber-backed carpeting that had stuck to the parquet. Not what I wanted, but I work with what I have because I can’t afford to replace an 18′ x 24′ room and two short hallways with brand new hardwood. Honestly, I’d rather keep the original flooring because nobody else did. Well, most people just ripped it up, so I have to be contrary!
Miffy had to check it out. It’s not in great shape, but the horrible gold finish has to go anyway, so I’d always intended to sand it, and other than a few blocks, which I was able to get on eBay for a reasonable price, in good shape, at least this far!
Woo-hoo! I knew there had been rust shag carpet in the living room/my office because I noticed a few bits of it were stuck to the baseboard when I stripped that awful wallpaper and painted, but apparently, they did the front room as well. I love the colour rust, but even in the 70s, rust shag carpet was ugly, and time has not improved that.
The rust carpet was not the rubber-backed culprit, though; that was…red. Vivid red. Just a few bits here and there, but enough for me to see that it had been really red. That must’ve been quite a sight in a room that size! This rubber backing can be mostly scraped off, but some of it is too hard to scrape and must be sanded.
The reason I don’t like carpet. This is from just part of one side of the room, after pulling up the carpet and foam underlay. Blech. The smell was nasty, too; old dust and…something. No matter how many times a carpet is vacuumed, or even steam-cleaned, it is NOT clean; there will always be fine particles of dust, dirt, dead skin cells, dead dust mites, and animal dander that make their way through the fibers, and even through foam underlay. Nasty.
Originally, I’d intended to do half the room at a time, but I decided, “fuck it–go big or stay home”. P wasn’t too happy about it; he didn’t mind the look of the carpet, and he thinks hard floors are too cold. He doesn’t have to clean, though, and he had told me he didn’t care what I did, so there’s that. As of Sunday, 02-25-19, there is still carpet in the hallway, but that’s going away before I finish this project. I told him I’d get runner rugs; at least those can be taken outside and actually cleaned properly.
When I got over by the door, my concern was that there would be water/mud/abrasion damage to the flooring, but it turned out that it was okay. I did take a deep breath and offer a silent prayer to the flooring gods before pulling up this foam, though!
Having no truck to haul this to the dump (and no idea where the dump might be anyway), I just cut it up into manageable strips, rolled and taped it, and put it outside. P has been putting as much foam as will fit into our trash can each week, and once the foam is gone, we’ll do the same with the carpet. It’s all stained with god knows what (and I don’t want to know), and it was ugly to begin with, so it’s not worth keeping. I might keep a little to make cat scratch-y things, but I’ll pressure wash it and let it dry fully before I bring any of it indoors!
Initially, I thought I could get away with 80 grit sandpaper. (Hah!) I bought an inexpensive half sheet sander, and a detail sander that have dust collectors, and I also bought a punch set so I can make holes in regular sandpaper for the half sheet sander. There’s dust, of course, but nowhere near as bad as it would be without the dust collectors. Anyway, I was wrong; 80 grit on 70 year old finish with hardened rubber carpet backing would take the rest of my life. I switched to 50 grit, then bought some 36 grit, and made better progress.
It’s still slow going, but I don’t want to use a floor sander because these are engineered wood, and given my inexperience, I’m afraid the tiles would be ruined. In any event, nobody has an orbital floor sander for rent, and since it’s parquet, I can’t sand with the grain using a drum sander. I’ll get there, though…eventually. The dark around the table is a shadow from the lamp, at least mostly.
yeCloser shot. I’m documenting this in detail because for the time being, “this is my life now”. 🙂
I couldn’t sand much on the weekend because P was really sick and slept almost all of the time, and the sanders aren’t too bad for noise, considering they’re power tools, but still plenty bad. I did a few blocks by hand because that doesn’t make any noise, but it was mostly just to be doing something toward my project; I didn’t make much progress that way. Anyway, once sanded, the wood seems to be in pretty good condition. 70 year old bone-dry red oak, though, is hard!
Oh…almost forgot. There was carpet tack strip all around the edges of the room; very dry, very brittle, and nailed every 4-6 inches, more on short pieces. I fervently hope the person who installed that shit stubs his or her toe every fucking day. I found a way to pull it up without damaging the flooring, but there are also staples where they’d tacked down the underlay. Fuck them–I was holding down on a tile by a furnace register, and pulling out a fucking staple with pliers, and ended up with a nice 3-inch cut on the back of my hand as a result. So…fuck them. I still have a little bit of tack strip left to pull up in the front room, and of course, there will be the hallway as well, but that’s something I can do even if P is asleep because it makes little noise (except for my occasional cursing).
02-26-19
Dear Stupid Asshole Who Installed That Godforsaken Fucking Rubber-Backed Carpet,
You suck. I hate you with the burning fire of a thousand suns. I hope every house you’ve ever lived or ever will live in is infested with bedbugs. Hungry bedbugs. And cockroaches. And yellowjacket wasps. I hope your dog shits on your bed and then chews your favourite shoes to pieces…and then shits them on your bed. You are the stupidest bastard in the known universe, and I hate you.
Taken the morning of 02-28-19. I’m doing laundry now, so I gave myself the evening off. I forgot to bring my replacement tiles home, too, but the weekend is coming, and hopefully P will spend time in the gradge, reading, so I can have some quality time with my sanders. Even with work, and not being able to sand after P gets home, I’m still making some progress.
Better progress today than last Saturday. Still plenty to go, but at least I feel like I did something, and I didn’t cut myself again. The cut, BTW, is healing well. Yay, butterfly bandages and Ozonol! It’s so weird that Ozonol isn’t available here except on Amazon from sellers that have Canadian products; that stuff is the shit! Anyway, the floor progress as of quitting time today (1800h).
Looks like more from this angle. Heh.
03-05-19
Slow going, since I have but little time that I can make a bunch of sanding noise, and of course, I have to go to work, but I’m 5 blocks away from the wall, then a 4-block section that’s the length of the room, and I’ll be at the point where I can run over the whole thing to smooth it (I’m just stripping and cleaning off the rock-hard residue from that fucking rubber-backed carpet at this point), and then clean, tape off/hang plastic, and apply polyurethane. So far, it looks like I’ll be able to just use clear poly and won’t have to stain. I’m just about forced to use water-based, even if I didn’t want to avoid the yellowish cast of oil-based, because there’s no way to ventilate this section, and wouldn’t be even if the weather was warm (it’s not). Anyway, slow going is at least going!
Getting closer to the wall!
03-11-19
Just a quick update. P went in to work on Saturday, so I got quite a lot done. Sunday not so much, but still did something toward it! The lone unfinished tile, and the one next to it are one that needs to be replaced, and a replacement that has not yet been put into place because I have to trim off the tongue sides (or just pull out a few more tiles when I figure out how the hell to do the area by the kitchen entrance.
03-13-19
I finally got all the way to the wall, and did the extra row so I’m at the edge of the opening to the kitchen. The unsanded tiles are those that need to be replaced because they were cut out for a wall that was moved.
03-17-19
I got up early yesterday, and since P was very sick, and still in bed, I couldn’t start the finish sanding. I could (and did) figure out a way to cut off the extension of the kitchen underlay so that I could put in tiles. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t easy, but I didn’t wound myself doing it, and I didn’t wake P with power tools, and that’s good enough for me! I took out tiles around the ones that needed to be replaced, which kind of made a scary mess, but I’m not easily frightened.
Not the most beautiful job, but I didn’t want to drag out the table saw for two 9″ wide tiles, there wasn’t enough to hold onto to use the skilsaw, so I was down to a jigsaw. The wood is so old and dry, and dense that the wood blade chattered all over the goddamned place, so I ended up using…a metal blade. Not the sharpest metal blade, either, but I got the job done, and my two shitty cuts will be covered by trim anyway, so meh.
I’m not at all impressed by the tiles I bought–I can see why people don’t bother refinishing them, and mine are MUCH thicker and better quality–so I used the notched tiles to fill in where the underlay had been. They needed to be cut shorter anyway, so they worked. A couple of them weren’t in great condition, but I’d decided several days ago that I couldn’t get away with clear poly and would have to stain anyway, so again…meh.
Since staining is quiet work, and I could sand individual tiles in the garage, I experimented with some stain colours. I had a little Colonial Maple and Early American left from the table, and I’d bought a little can of Provincial, then a litre of Special Walnut because it was on sale. I used the purchased tiles for the experimentation because I had only one (it was cut, but grain went the wrong way to use it at the doorway) of the good quality tiles, and wanted to use it for the colour I thought I liked best.
Just stain on two of them, stain and poly on two of them, indoor light. The top right is the Provincial that I decided I liked best, with 3 coats of water-based poly. Just in case, I put poly on one of the purchased tiles that has (top to bottom) Early American, Provincial, and Special Walnut. The Provincial seems the most neutral of the three, so I’m going with that, but I like Early American pretty well, too, so if I couldn’t get Provincial, that would be my second choice, and I wouldn’t be too disappointed.
In the sun, while the stain was drying. No poly yet. They look so much lighter than they do indoors!
Two coats of Provincial and three coats of poly, close up. I quite like this.
B has a respirator he said I can use, but since the ventilation will be poor with half the room in plastic, and no way to open windows for that area even if it is warm enough (maybe, maybe not), I’m thinking of using Bona DriFast stain instead of Minwax Wood Finish. Bona is “oil-modified”, whatever the hell that means, but apparently better than Minwax. I dunno. It’s a little more expensive, but really not much, and I like their Provincial, or they also have a “medium brown” (swear to Christ that’s what it’s called) that’s neutral. I’m really not too fussy about the stain colour as long as it’s medium, and neutral. No gold tones because yuck, and no red tones because the oak already has red. Not too light because the room has yellow (Biltmore Buff) walls that I actually like very much, and not too dark because every speck of dust would show. I’ve also decided on semi-gloss poly instead of satin. I used satin on the table, and it’s okay, but I just like semi-gloss better. It’ll mean a close friendship with the Swiffer Sweeper I got, but I’d rather spend a few minutes every day or two running over the floor than have a floor I only kind of like.
04-07-19
Well, with P being sick (ER and ICU sick), then me getting sick, then him again, it took fucking ages to get here, but yesterday morning, I finally finished sanding with 120 grit. I swept, took down curtains, vacuumed, taped off, and FINALLY prepared to stain.
I didn’t start staining until 1600h, with fingers crossed.
I had good light, and breathed a sigh of relief when I liked the colour.
Took a long time, making sure to get the each and every seam.
Losing daylight!
Finally! I finished at 2100h,picked up my stuff, and took this at 2110h.
I’m still arguing with myself as to whether I want another coat. I do want it…I just don’t know whether I want to do the work!
04-07-19 (today’s work, not yesterday’s)
Getting into a groove now. I decided I did need a second coat even if I didn’t want to do the work. This has taken me less than 2h. Apply, allow to soak in, and after about 15 minutes, go back to the first part. My knees are still protesting, but they’ll just have to suck it up.
Knees are screaming, but I’m on the home stretch! I’m going through gloves like shit through a goose, and having to do as many as I can reach, then wait 15 minutes because I’m in a spot where I have nowhere left to work ahead, but I’m almost there!
This has only been swept, not vacuumed, so there’s still sander dust, but it’s one of the worse spots on the unfinished side.
About 12″ away, my hard (HARD!) work.
I actually finished at about 1410h, but P asked me to make some KD, and after I ate, I was too tired to walk all the way through the house to take a picture, so I had a short nap instead. So, here’s the second coat, natural lighting.
Now, just three coats of polyurethane to go, and this side is finished. Wish me luck, trying to do poly on a floor in a house with leftover sanding dust, a cat that by rights should be bald, and my hair!
04-14-19 FUCKING FINALLY!! The final unveiling won’t be until after work because I decided to put an extra coat on due to having heard Miffy’s rear toenails tap-tapping on the floor when he walks, but it’s done. Well, this part is done, at least. For the record, I ended up going with satin finish instead of semi-gloss after all because although I like the way semi-gloss looks, I’m less enthusiastic about cleaning, and semi-gloss would show a lot more dust/cat hair than satin, so….satin!
I couldn’t find my tulle, so I split quilt batting in half to make dust covers for the furnace registers. I also had the heat turned down to reduce the number of times it would come on, just in case.
I dusted, vacuumed, dusted again, dusted some more, then put plastic up floor to ceiling, and ran over everything with tack cloths.
Taped off again. I guess I could’ve skipped taping because it’s clear poly, and water-base, but I decided to do it. Supplies all inside my little plastic cage, ready to begin!
I was worried about the first coat because this stuff dries SO fast! I was slapping it on like I was cleaning the house at 4: 40 PM and Vance said, “DAD’S HOME!” It looked streaky, and I figured I’d have to sand this one because this was my first experience with water-base poly, and you can’t “apply with the grain” on parquet. Poor lighting because of the windows, but I hadn’t much choice.
After the first coat dried, it looked fine, and the second coat seemed to go on better.
I didn’t take any pictures of the third and fourth coat that I did today because I had too much shit to do, and I was tired, but they looked pretty much the same. It’s clear polyurethane, after all!
04-15-19 So, the sunshine doesn’t help, and a photo doesn’t really do justice, but this is the finished product, and I very much like my floor! Now, I just have to finish the rest of it. *sigh* I haven’t yet put the furnace vent thingies back because I had to unclog, pressure wash, and refill the pond after work today, so I didn’t have much time left after I took down the plastic and removed the tape.
Well, it’s almost done. This side, at least. I washed down all of the furniture with Murphy’s, then put the heavy-duty felt feet on them so they won’t scratch my back-breaking (more like knee-breaking) work. I still have to iron the curtains and put them back up (Iron Curtains!), and if we ever get a day nice enough–and I don’t have to work–I’m going to pressure wash the rug before putting it back. It’s not filthy or anything, but it hasn’t been even steam-cleaned since we moved in, and I want it done properly. I also think I’m going to get a small TV to put on the black stand because I’d like to use my rocking chair again. Dunno. Anyway, I love my floor; it was a lot of work, and I still have plenty to go, but I love my floor.
Actually, one more. I didn’t take one from exactly the same angle, but I was able to crop one pretty close. This is how the room looked with the carpet. Meh.
…and so it ends.
After I lost P, I needed to stay busy, so I decided it was a good time to work…hard. I didn’t take pictures while I was sanding, or when I had a plastic tent around half of the room because…because I just don’t take as many pictures anymore. Anyway, the work needed to be done, and my mind certainly needs to be occupied, so there’s that.
I worked my arse off all of Thanksgiving weekend. I was nearly finished the sanding, so I finished that on Thursday (11-28-19), swept, and did one pass with Baby ShopVac, and one with the house vacuum.
On Friday (11-29-19), I spent the majority of the day cleaning (holy fuck, the dust, even with plastic tenting), taped off, and applied the first coat of stain.
Saturday (11-30-19), I did the second coat of stain, which went much more quickly than the first coat had, for which my knees were grateful.
Sunday, I just spent doing laundry and cleaning the rest of the front room, but didn’t take any pictures because it didn’t look different; just less dusty.
12-07-19
I didn’t take a photo of the first coat because I forgot, but they look pretty much the same, so that’s the second coat. I’m hoping I can get two done tomorrow, leave the plastic up for three more days (Bona Mega hits 90% cure in that time) and put the furniture back next weekend. We’ll see how that works out. Anyway, I at least got two on!
12-15-19
I waited three days for the poly to get to 90% cure, then took down the plastic. I didn’t put anything back then, though; I waited until this weekend. Plastic is down, and the rug I paid either $24.26 or $26.24 for on Amazon ($99.99, but I had points) arrived.
The colour of the rug was called “graham cracker”, but on no planet is a graham cracker this colour. I like it, though, and Miff gave it four circle-foot stamps of approval. Actually, he didn’t at first because he has to sniff everything new, but it smelled like new carpet and he thought it was STANKEH.
I worked all day yesterday, and got much of it back to normal. The rug looks less out of place IRL, and the angle sucks because I was sitting down for a well-deserved rest.
12-15-2019 – At long last…I’ve FINISHED, and for the first time since February, I have curtains on the north windows! I had purchased three extending rods, thinking somehow that they’d work to replace the cobbled-together mess that they’d had “holding up” (sarcasm quotes) those curtains, but then I realized there are five windows, not six. It worked out perfectly in the end, though, because with a hacksaw and some ingenuity, I made one rod, and it’s nice and sturdy, unlike the seven or eight 3′ rods they’d half-assed stuck together. The TV stand still needs to be replaced, but that’s one of my plans for the Christmas break.
I still have the hallway to do (as soon as I figure out how to lift a dryer and block beneath it by myself), but after doing the whole room, I think I can manage a couple of 3′ wide 12′ long hallways! Overall, I’m pretty happy with it; it’s not brand new hardwood, no, but it didn’t cost me $5000. It’s the best kind of floor…finished, and paid for. 🙂
So…now the REAL end is in sight. Over Christmas vacation, I (eventually) decided to tackle the last part…the hallway. I didn’t take many pictures because I needed to get shit done, and it wasn’t all that exciting anyway. So…
12-27-19 – I ripped up the carpet, and almost threw it away, but then I decided that for the winter, at least, Onje and Bulk can have gradge carpet; that concrete is cold on their feet, and I almost never turn on that killowatt-sucking heater, so the poor guys don’t even want to walk on it. The nasty foam, though, went away. There was a metric fucktonne of glue on this, and a lot of rubber.
My supervisor had to inspect everything after I’d pulled off the carpet strips.
I had put up plastic over the walls, which was quite an adventure when the furnace kicked on and formed a sort of vacuum. I was also glad I never throw anything out because the stupid little curtain things I’d taken off the east windows made good dust covers that still allowed ventilation to the furnace room and the air return on the wall. I didn’t take pictures of it while I was sanding because I was too fucking busy dying from the dust and whatever nasty organisms were living under that carpet. I actually was wheezing, which was sort of scary because I don’t have Albuterol anymore–yikes. Also, wrangling the washer onto 2×4 scraps so I could reach under the edge that sticks out was quite an adventure, but at least it wasn’t the washer because that I could not have lifted! I also had to repair a few of the edge tiles by the furnace room; there’d been a leak at some point in the past, and since the wood was beneath whatever godforsaken ugly carpet was on there at the time, the wood couldn’t dry, and it rotted. I lost half a day to doing that, and I had little enough time to work on this. That fucking carpet just had to get in one more jab!
12-21-19 – Staining begins. The first coat was slow going because I could reach across only 3 rows at a time, and there was no way to do it except stain three rows, wait 15 minutes, come back and wipe excess, stain three more…lather, rinse, repeat.
Almost to the end!
Cat barrier. The stain dries fast, but some spots soak in more slowly, and I didn’t want Miffy walking on it and getting stain on his little circle feet, then cleaning himself and getting poisoned. Not that it mattered because when I lay down to rest my poor knees and back, and wait for stain to dry, I called Miff so he could lie down on me, and he didn’t come. Eventually, I heard a tiny cry, and he’d somehow got trapped behind the barricades. He walked only down 9′ of hallway, and it was the first part I’d done, so his circles were safe, but I did leave the barricades up after I’d sprung him from the plastic prison.
I also came up with an ingenious solution to the missing carpet strip at the doorways, but didn’t take pictures because I had so fucking much to do. I’ll add them later if I think of it.
This weekend, I’m going to wash the walls, and the washer and dryer because in spite of the plastic, there’s still some dust (a LOT less, though), and then the weekend after that, I plan to do the poly. Once I’ve finished that, the Project From Hell will be finished in its entirety. As I told J, the next time I get the idea to do a project this big, I’m going to calmly walk to the garage, get a piece of 2×4, and bash myself over the fucking head with it.
01-05-20 – It is done. It’s fucking done. Finished. Complete. Fin. Terminado. Färdiga. Finito. The…fucking…end. Initially, I was going to try to get away with just three coats of poly, but I did the laundry very early–before I went to pick up groceries–so I was able to squeeze in four coats to be sure it matches. I also “smartified” the hallway lights. No wonder the light was so crappy in there; I’d thought it was because all of our CFL bulbs were 2300K, but nope…the hallways lights were incandescents! Now the hallway lights and the light over the washer are daylight Zigbee bulbs. That would have come in handy while I was sanding and couldn’t see for shit, but oh well. They’re smart now, and (more importantly) daylight. Only the Man Cave and the Boy Bafroom have soft white lighting; the Man Cave because all Miff and I do in there is watch TV, and the bathroom because that’s where I stumble off to pee in the middle of the night, and I have the motion detection set to turn the lights on at 10% brightness so I don’t wake up more than I must. Anyway…
First coat, applied 01-04-19
Actually, after I’d washed down the walls, I had to do a quick “test fit” to see how the rugs looked. They cover nearly all of the floor, so it’s a pretty good idea of the finished product, aside from the fact that they’ve never been vacuumed to raise the pile.
01-05-20 – The final coat (still wet). Once it dries fully, it’ll match the rest of the floor.
There will be two more pictures once I wait a week for the poly to cure, because then I can put the rugs in place, and a cat bed for Miffy in his favourite spot right beside the bedroom door (heating duct under the floor there), but this enormous fucking project is at long last complete, and I did it all by myself.
01-12-20
…and so it actually ends. The hallway rugs are in place, and do provide the hoped-for continuity between the front room and the hallway.
12′ long rug in the hallway between the front room and my bathroom.
9′ long rug between my bathroom and the bedroom. I was initially unhappy that I couldn’t get a 10′ rug for this space, but seeing it in place, I’m actually glad it’s shorter because it just looks “right-er” (it’s a word!) than it would nearly pushed up against the 12′ rug, and it also leaves room for Miffy’s bed in his warm floor spot.
Bonus vacuum cleaner marks, just because I love vacuum cleaner marks.
One of us cares not in the least for all of my hard work, just as long as his warm spot has somewhere soft to sleep. I never did take any pictures of the trim I used at the doorways, but it’s the best kind because it was free. It’s some kind of shelf molding that I guess they’d used somewhere in the house, and there was an 8′ length in the garage when we bought the house. It turned out to be perfect for the places where the wood floor meets the carpeted rooms, and there is approximately 1″ (yes, an inch!) left over, which I kept so I’d have a sample of the profile should I ever need it. It’s poplar, so it took more stain than the oak, but it looks fine, and again…free.
So…that’s the floor project from HELL, and I’m so very happy it’s complete. I really wish P were here to see it; he wasn’t terribly “into” this project because he thought hard floors too cold, and he was so sick, but even so, I know he’d tell me how good it looks, and how I’m a perfeshnl floor refinisher, and he’d have liked the soft rugs. He always told me how good my projects were, whether that was actually the case or not, and I will always miss that, but I’ll have to settle for the fact that it’s done, and it doesn’t look horrible.
