Wooden You Know It!

At last, the painting downstairs is done and that pesky plastic on the floor can come up and get thrown away. It also means that the wood sanding people can come in and pretty up the wood floor in the living room and art studio.


Here’s another very old picture this time to illustrate the floor before it was sanded and finished. We don’t have a good picture of how bad it looked. In fact it looks pretty good in this picture except for a grey patch you can see near the table legs. But take my word for it that it was not good. It had a lot of scratches and worn patches.


Before we brought in the floor sander, Mr. Remodel had to make new transitions because the height of the wood floor was higher than the tile. The old transitions were no good because the height difference had changed (from wood to vinyl to wood to tile) and because they were too big and obtrusive. Plus, because we had taken out the wood flooring in the entry and dining area, we required additional transitions. Mr. Remodel made the new transitions out of pieces of the wooden floor that were removed.


Here is an employee of Mr. Sander taking off the old finish in the art studio.


And in the living room.

We were a bit concerned about all the dust we thought was going to be generated but when Mr. Sander said the job was now around 95% dust-free he was right. The large bag on the sander does a good job of collecting most of the dust.

After the sanding was finished Mr. Sander’s helpers put down a layer of sanding sealer before sanding the floors again. Then they put on a layer of finish, which we couldn’t walk on. So in order to move from the kitchen to upstairs where we were sleeping, we had to go into the garage from the kitchen, from the garage into the driveway, into the front door and then up the stairs.

The following morning Mr. Sander himself came to put on a layer of finish. He came at 7am and worked in a rush because he had another appointment at 7.30am. The result was a bit of a sloppy job in some areas.
The floor was coated with natural, satin-finish polyurethane, which is not supposed to yellow.


Mr. Sander and his helpers came back a third time and worked on some of the areas that Mr. Sander had messed up. That said we are delighted with the overall look of the floor. With the old finish removed, the true beauty of the floor shows through. We thought the floor would look good but we didn’t know it would end up looking sensational. And, if the finish doesn’t yellow as promised, then it will stay looking this good for years to come.


Sanding in the art studio made Mr. Remodel’s addition of flooring into the closet look like it was always there.


Where the floor really comes into its own is in the living room.


The strip of wood which sits on the slanted section of wall going up the stairs is the same wood as is on the floor. That used to have an old, ugly metal banister bolted onto it, which we removed. The wood was repaired and sanded and finished with the same polyurethane. To replace that banister, Mr. Remodel made a new one, also from the flooring, which was similarly finished and mounted on the other side of the stairs.

Seeing so many changes recently, is exciting and there is a real sense of the end being in sight. There is still a lot to do but we are getting to the point where there is less to do than has already been done.