Some More of My Floor

The floor pictured in the previous post looks good but I want to say it is not perfect. Most people don't go around examining floors for flaws but many folks have indicated that they were inspired by how well they turned out and it gives them hope for their own floors. Some of the boards have deep divots due to the splintering dry wood and since this was obviously a problem for the owner of the property who painted the floors battleship grey back in the 1950s, in some of the grey painted areas the paint didn't sand out completely. Some of the deep red color didn't come out either. Here is a close up of one of the boards that illustrates this;

I made the decision to refinish the wood instead of paint the floors based on the fact that they had turned out satisfactory after sanding. They also look quite rustic and have old house character. I did not use stain on this floor. I used shellac for the color and then applied two coats of polyurethane over the shellac except on some of the divots I have had to apply 4 or 5 coats of poly in order to reduce the chance of some areas splintering. The build up of poly on the rough edges of the splinters reduces the roughness of the wood on these edges. Another thing that gives the floor character are the plugs I made for where the floor boxes were:



I couldn't match the wood since I don't have any scraps from this floor and you don't know what color they will turn out until you put shellac on them. I will be mounting external boxes onto the baseboards and the wires should be hidden by the shoe molding. I have to paint the baseboards first, though.

Here is how the adjacent room turned out after a coat of oil based KILLZ primer:

Now for the big clean up. There is a lot of dust in this house!

Never Thought It Would Look Like This!

In April I took this picture



Today I took this picture



Ahhhh, shellac!

NEWS FLASH

Breaking news! After 6 years of being maneuvered around the second floor. the worlds heaviest bathtub has landed on the first floor! That deserves a beer or three! I figured out a way to lower it without leaving large dents in the stairs. Finally, 30 years after the fact, I got to put my physics education to work. Now I truly understand the value of education. Rigging these pulleys allowed me to be able to actually lift the tub off the floor single handed.





My neighbors used the guide ropes attached to the tub to steer it through the door at the foot of the stairwell so that it ended up on the floor below.
Don't believe me? Here is proof!



Last June I described this tub and couldn't find anyone to take it off my hands. Now it is at ground level does anybody want it? I sure would hate to have to use it in the garden for a kitty bath or some kind of raised bed......

Progress Report

I am almost ready to sand the last two floors. I hope that by Sunday they will be done and I can finish working on my plumbing leaks so we can get the water turned back on so that we can give this place a thorough cleaning because it is very dusty!
I put this door back in and the molding back on. It makes a big difference.




When we bought the place this door was hanging out in the basement and I stripped and refinished it last year. Here is a picture of that Eastlake latch lock that I found for $4.00 last year and mentioned in this blog way back when. I gave it a coat of aniline tinted shellac which is why it is dark and shiny. It fit the existing screw holes in the door perfectly.



As you can see, I still have the worlds heaviest bathtub sitting in the middle of the floor.



I have tied a rope around it and have oiled up these pulleys to see if I will be able to lower to the first floor.



The plan is to attach them to the exposed beam in my "Gary sized hole" in the ceiling that I made last week. I bought these pulleys for a $1.00 at the end of some auction about 10 years ago and they have been sitting on a shelf in my garage. Their time has finally come! If this works it will be the most fun I will have had for $1.00 in a long time! If it doesn't work, well it will be the most fun I have had for a $1.00 in a long time!





I got the landing shellacked and urethaned as well as those upper three steps replaced. You see those lower steps? Those were done back when all I knew about was stain and polyurethane. I used to think they looked good. I shall have to see how the floor turns out in this room after sanding. Maybe I won't paint it after all. I'm thinking shellac again....... must be an addiction.