Floors

We were lucky enough to find a house that has hardwood floors throughout the entire house minus a small section of the kitchen. Unfortunately, they were in pretty rough shape. They had dog stains and a lot of scratches in them. Therefore we decided to refinish them as the final big project on the first half of the house. I had developed a lovely head cold so while I was curled up on the couch, Nate rented a floor sander and edger and he and Adam went to town on the floors. Now this is a very tiring messy job. After many hours, aching backs and dust covered walls, the boys turned the floors from this:

 

 To this:

 

    
 

Now came my turn. Because of the stains and scratches we decided to go with a dark stain. I learned some interesting things while learning how to stain floors. First is that staining floors is similar but different from staining other things. Second, if you are going to use a dark stain you want to "pop" the wood before you stain. This consists of geting the sanded wood (after you clean up all the dust) wet. I did this but using a garden sprayer and lightly spraying the wood and letting it dry. Thirdly, you do not have to be on your hands and knees with a rag to stain floors. They make a fuzzy pad thing that attaches to the end of a painter pole that you can dip in the stain and spread on the floor (always with the grain!). The last thing I learned is that you want to keep a wet edge. This means that you want to stain an entire length of the room and then come back along the same edge and repeat until the entire room is done. 

 

After first coat of stain

 

After the first coat of stain we did a second coat to even out the color. We also put a coat of polyurethane 

 

After this we did a light sanding and then another coat of polyurethane. This last coat needs to be really hard so you have to wait a whole week before walking on it or moving any furniture on it. That means this Sunday we can finally move our bed and new mattress in! Stay tuned for move in part one!