The Floor is Done.

When Tyler and I decided to jump into our first real home-improvement project, we didn't really know what we were getting into. Hardwood floors sounded so glamorous somehow.

Big Step One: Removal. Just hours after finishing his first round of dental school finals, Tyler took to the carpet with all kinds of finals flurry. It was up and in pieces in no time. Our friend Adam shared with us one reason Pittsburgh is often named one of the best places to live: the garbage men take everything. That's right (except large cement slabs - I was a little disappointed about that one). So Tyler rolled up the carpet, and set it in front of our house the night before garbage day and vwa-la! It was gone.



Next came the padding... it created extremely permeating red dust. Yuck. Picture to come...

Apparently carpet is attached to wood floors by these strips of nail-covered wood along the edges. So Tyler did the main work of pulling them up; I followed, pulling up the leftover nails.



They look more like something that belongs in a torture chamber rather than in a family home.



The large nail on the right-hand side goes into the wood and all the little nails go into the carpet. Scary huh?


You can see the wood stain color - basically it was orange. You could call it amber, but that's just a nicer way of saying orange. We were very happy to find the floor in pretty good condition, although we were quite certain that we wanted to stain it another color.

Big Step Two: Sanding. To prepare for sanding, all the little holes (from the nails and the natural gaps from time) had to be filled with some brown junk. Tyler is so thorough! Look at that.


We were warned about the dust explosion from sanding, so we covered everything with towels.


Then the sanding began. We rented this great machine from Lowe's for only $35/day (Home Depot cost twice that much) and went at it. As it was Saturday and I wasn't at work, I did a good couple of hours in the morning, but again, Tyler really did most of the work.



The sanding was frequently paused to pick off the build-up on the sandpaper.



After three different kinds of sandpaper and about 12 hours, the sanding was done. The light color was kind of pretty. I should mention that we tried to used the liquid stripper to help us with the edges (since that big sander couldn't get to the edges), but it really didn't work - at least not for us. Sandpaper by hand was the best way.


When I went back to work on Monday, Tyler spent the whole day on his hands and knees smoothing scratches from the sanding process and taking up excess dust with mineral spirits. He really has been so careful about every step of this process - I'm very impressed by him.

Big Step Three: Stain. We debated colors forever - really. Finally we choose.... Brown Mahogany.



Starting the stain after so much sanding was a little scary, but it was beautiful as it went on. Unfortunately we (ie Tyler) had to go back over it soaking up the excess with a cloth.


So you can see here, after two coats of staining.



Big Step Four: Sealant. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of this one! We chose the water-based (as opposed to oil-based) again after much discussion. It took four coats and a whole Saturday. We could walk on it for a while so we lived downstairs and slept on the couches in sleeping bags. Tyler is so sweet - he took the small couch - and it was actually kind of fun!



Overall we are very happy with how it turned out! We like the color a lot - we feel like it adds a lot of richness to the room. It's good to know that we can learn and accomplish a big home-improvement project together. Painting the walls should be sinch after this...