Oak Floors

So, there's been an extended period of radio silence here.  Sorry about that.   We've been busy doing the upstairs floors.

The guest room floor is installed.  We used more of the salvaged maple that we used for the other bedrooms upstairs.

The common room is almost done.  We used salvaged oak - from the same house the maple came from.

On the back of the oak we found this stamp:

Henry Buchholz Hinsdale ILL

We did a bit of research and found that Hinsdale is up near Chicago.   Henry Buchholz was a builder and developer in the early 1900s.  He liked oak.   So do we.

The oak floor is going much faster than the maple.   We can't tell if that's just because we really know what we're doing or because it's drier this time of year and we're not fighting swollen wood or what.   At any rate, we're grateful.

This is what's left of the oak today.   Our boards ranged in length from 12 inches to 15 feet long.  One of the things we have to do to make the best use of the wood is to put it together like puzzle pieces so that we don't make cuts and can fit the existing pieces together.   So, we arrange the wood by length.   It's tedious, but worth it when it comes time to lay out the rows for installation.   Layout is my job.   Installation [running the Super Nailer] is Eric's.

Layout involves fitting the boards to the correct length and attempting to get 100 years of mystery gunk off the tongues so the boards fit together well.  Sometimes I can get it off.  Sometimes it's cement.  If it doesn't then Eric goes at it again with the box knife [pic below] before final placement and nailing.

Turns out we had enough oak to do most of the floor upstairs and in front of the stairs. Woo-hoo!  We have enough maple left over to do the rest of the big room upstairs.   We considered getting new oak and keeping it all the same, but neither of us really wants to use the rest of the maple anywhere else in the house and we don't want to toss it, so we decided that we'd have a 'mixed' floor and let that be part of the house's story.  

We probably could have done something fancy to show off both woods up there, but we didn't know exactly how much square footage we had to begin with or how much maple we'd have left over after the guestroom without doing a way more intensive count than anyone wanted to do, so we winged it.    When we started with the oak, we looked at the stack and said, 'If we can get from the bookshelves all the way over to the stairwell with oak, then we can do the other area in maple and at least the oak and maple areas will make sense.'   We'll have exactly enough oak.  The floor upstairs won't match, but it's a good story. 

House Update: Bedroom Floors

I know it's been forever since I've given you an update on the house, but the truth is drywall is boring.

Drywall mudding is boring.   Also dusty.

Painting is boring.   Also messy.

Sorting antique flooring is boring.    Have I told you about this flooring?   I found it at a salvage place, without nails [!], for 69 cents a square foot.  About a thousand square feet of 2-1/4 inch maple and oak antique flooring from a 1910 house up near Chicago.   [With the miller's name stamped on the back.  Henry Buchholtz.]  Also, every board was numbered and labelled with the room it came out of.   Cool!   We brought it home, wiped it down and stored it for a year in the basement.   Then we had to haul the blasted stuff out of the basement to the upstairs, which meant up the basement stairs, through the house, outside and up the ladder, over the roof, through Claire's closet.   Piles and piles of flooring.  Also, it was very hot.  There was a lot of complaining.    

I wanted to sort by number/room, but I was out-voted.   Okay, the truth is, I caved to all the glaring.   We sorted by length and end configuration:  flat, tongue, groove.   Flat/flats here, flat/grooves there, flat/tongues here, tongue/grooves there.   Then it was just a matter of being as efficient as possible with the sizes so that we wasted as little wood as possible.   Once the wood was laid out by size, it wasn't too hard to find a board very, very close to the size we needed.  

Laying antique flooring is not boring, but it is a big pain in the everywhere.  Old boards have gunk in the grooves.   They are bent.   They had been refinished once before so the tops didn't match up when nailed down.  It took weeks to get the floors laid.    If you ever need tips for laying antique flooring, then give us a shout because Eric is expert now.  Triangle jigs are your friends.

Then there was hand planing the worst of the unevens down.   That was my job.   I used this Bosch 6 Amp 3-1/4-Inch Planer .  I am a great planer.   [After the first 15 minutes or so of getting used to the crouching, pushing and noise.]  Planing was kind of fun actually.   It's the loud power tool thing.  Also, planing is dusty.

Then there was the sanding with the monster sanders that we rented from Menard's.   Sanding is boring.   Also dusty.  Also really exhausting.

We had to make some important decisions during the sanding.   Most importantly, how perfect do we want the top to be? 

Answer:  Not perfect.   It's old wood.   With a lot of stories [my favorite is the very old ink stain we found in between two boards.   Very old.   The top stain had been sanded off when the floor was refinshed earlier [1970s?], but I am dying to know Who spilled that ink and when?]  There are places where the old finish is still there where the boards were uneven and the megasander just didn't get down that far.   There are places where the awful dark walnut finish from the last re-finishing  didn't come quite all the way off. [Who in their right mind would finish light maple flooring with a walnut finish?   I ask you!]   There are nail holes from when the floor was originally laid in the original house.   There are cracks and dings in some of the boards.   I want those stories to stay there.   I want to look at that floor and be reminded of all the people who walked on it and worked on it for the last 100+ years.  I love every imperfection.

Also, I'm lazy and there's just only so much sanding I can stand before Let's Freaking Move On Already.

Then there was the cleaning of all the dust.   Three times, just to make sure we got as much as possible off the walls and the floor before the floor finishing.  

In short, we've been so busying doing the house [and the jobs and the garden and the canning and the occasional house cleaning] that there just was not time to document it.   Sometimes you have to choose between doing something and taking pictures of it.

However,  this past weekend,  finally,...FINALLY! we finished the floors.  And I remembered to ask Lily to take a pic so there would be at least a little documentation.   The pic above shows me just starting the first coat of shellac in Lily's room.  Dig that apple green wall color.  It's cheery, I tell you.

This is what we did:

First coat: Amber Shellac, by Zinsser.   I heart shellac.   It's old.   It's fun.   It's got that period look we're after.   Also all of the doors and trim we've salvaged had/have shellac on them, so...matchy matchy!  Also, have you SEEN what shellac does to wood?   Gor. Geous!  

Then:  Light sand with 220 grit,  and wipe down with tack cloth [cheesecloth soaked in wax.  Awesome!]

2nd coat:  More of the shellac in Lily's room.  Claire's room is in a corner of the house with a totally different light, and darker wall color and she only needed one coat.

Then: Light sand with 220 grit,  and wipe down with tack cloth.

3rd and 4th coat:   Sealer, by Zinsser.   It seals up the wax coat in the shellac and preps the surface for the polyurethane that comes next.   Then sand and wipe down after each of these coats.

5th and 6th coats:  Minwax, Ultimate Floor Finish, Water-based polyurethane.  It was a lot more expensive, but everything Eric studied recommended it so we went with it.   We only want to do this One Freaking Time and if you don't pay in quality materials, then you will definitely pay in time and aggravation.  [I know this for a fact.]

Pics of finished floors coming soon.