Wow!
Bless the hearts of those who CHOOSE to
refinish floors for a living.
I guess somebody has to do it.
But we are glad it won't be us
EVER AGAIN.
Whew!
It has been a LOT of hard work
and our bodies are sore.
But we are pretty pleased with how
they are looking.
We are in the middle of the process,
so we still don't know what the end
results will be, but so far so good.
First Kyle ran the big belt sander to pull off all the
old stain and varnish.
Look at the difference!!!
It is red oak, so the stain was REALLY orange.
But boy when it is in its raw state
it is really beautiful!
Unfortunately, even a clear stain will
turn it right back to red/orange.
So we had to get creative.
There were still some dark spots.
We tried the YouTube trick of
hydrogen peroxide to lift the stains,
but it just turned the floor yellow.
Not sure what was up with that,
but we decided to scrap that idea.
While he was doing the main floor areas
I followed along and did all the edges with
a little orbital sander.
I sat on a little rolling stool Kyle figured
out for me so I didn't have to sit on the floor.
That little guy has some POWER and
since there were wheels on my little stool
it sometimes tried to pull me across the room!
My legs and abs got a good workout
making sure I had relative control.
And then your back muscles come into play
to try and move it laterally in front of you
to sand the edges.
Meanwhile, Kyle followed the big sander when he
was going forward - it pulled you along,
but then you had to back up and it did NOT want
to play along. Plus you had to lift up on the
handles to rotate it onto its nose so the belt
would contact the ground.
So... I'm pretty sure there isn't a muscle group
he isn't VERY aware of at this moment.
(Not to mention the blisters on his palms...)
Poor guy!
(He let me do a small section in my bedroom
and BOY was I glad he was doing it.
That was HARD WORK!!!)
Anyhow.
We had purchased a medium brown stain
but when we put it on... I'm not sure who
decided BLACK was medium brown.
It was SO dark!!!
(And that is AFTER rubbing it off with a rag!)
Yikes!!!
We let it dry overnight to see if it would soak in and
lighten any. (Spoiler alert - it didn't...)
So he started sanding it off.
And low and behold we got a beautiful
weathered barnboard sort of look!
The right side is my zoom room, mid sanding.
(And my little sander...)
The left side is our bedroom - still wet so it looks
weird, but what a difference!
I stained all the rooms.
And since we were going to just sand it off again,
I didn't worry about making it even or whatever.
It sure made the living room look SMALL.
One of the hazards of staining in bare feet.
The stain is water based so washes right off,
but I wasn't so sure it would come off my shoes.
And I only brought one pair.
About 30 minutes later after Kyle did another light sanding in the
zoom room and then moved on to the bedroom.
Oh oh, just glanced at the clock.
I need to start my zoom.
Kyle is in Hays returning the sanders.
We got all done by 3:00 and I had to
be here to zoom at 4:30. So he had to go
without me. He's also going to Home Depot
to pick up the stuff we need to finish up.
Gotta run.
Love to you all!!!
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