This is me sitting on the current master bedroom floor. See all that white? Yeah the prior owners decided to paint everything and get carpet. So all of these wood floors were covered in it. This is me going around and pulling up all the staples I could find.
When you strip off the paint, here is what was hiding! Removing the paint was seriously a daunting process. I got two rooms completely stripped, but it took three people each and about 5-10 hours a room. I didn't really have that sort of time, so I ended up sanding the paint off the other two. Much easier! However I did still have to go around the edges to get the paint off. I went through lots of different methods to remove the paint: various paint strippers, Goof Off, and mineral spirits. What I recommend? Sanding, then getting what is left with Goof Off and steel wool. I read some things that said not to use steel wool, but it was all that worked. I guess we'll see if my floors rust.
Meet the buff sander! Ridiculously easy to use and fairly cheap to rent at Home Depot. For $50 a day you can have this for 24 hours. I had about 1200 square feet to do and this was plenty of time. The sand paper is the biggest expense, but get what you have to. Don't skimp!
Putting varathane on the floor... also super easy. I bought a water based, satin varathane that is about $50 a can. I've used one and half, but still need to do the hall. It says it only covers 400 square feet a can, but mine went way farther than that. I HIGHLY recommend using this product to finish your floors. Way easy to use!
I bought three types of applicators: a deck stain applicator and two different kinds of lamb's wool applicators. Consensus? The all work the same. The two lamb's wool applicators had longer handles which was convenient. Deck stain applicator was a hands and knees tool. Other than convenience, they were all equally easy to use.
The finished product!!! They look a million times better :) Special thanks to Jake, Britney, Leah, Braden, Shellee, Travis, and Gary for all of their help throughout the floor process. Couldn't have done it without you all!
Are they perfect? No, but let's be realistic... the house is 38 years old and they were trashed. I would have had to pay serious money for them to be perfect. Just in case you didn't know, "serious money" is not what I'd call my budget. Things are coming together and I'm a million blog posts behind. I have to move in this weekend, wish me luck!
To seeing past the surface,
Boomba
No comments:
Post a Comment