Once upon a time.... a long time ago.... there was a little red brick schoolhouse. All the little children who lived nearby, walked to the school through rain, shine, snow, sleet, mud and s#%t to learn their A B C's. For over eighty years, they walked upon the maple floors leaving behind the muck from their footwear. One day, the powers that be decided to send the little children to a new and bigger school and the little red brick schoolhouse became a little red brick community centre. But...because the floors were so grimy and dirty, a new floor had to be placed overtop of the old. The new floor remained for over 50 years...so long that the people forgot about the old floor underneath. Then one day, a very insane young (snicker) couple bought the schoolhouse and......
The floor beneath the floor. Both are maple, the top 1" strip and underneath are 3 1/2"wide 1 1/4" thick.
Removing the strip flooring was a major demo job. It took many days of prying up the individual strips and removing all the nails left behind....and there was a shitload.....and then the clean up.
The next step involved prying up the 3 1/2" maple and denailing all the boards. The maple was laid directly on the floor joists on 2' centres so we reinforced the floor with cross pieces and new tongue and groove plywood.
Look...no floor and no roof...we were lucky the rain , for the most part, held off.
Ross finishing off the last of the subfloor with his two favourite tools, his power nailer and sledge hammer. Well, that's that for the next six months. The old flooring was stacked and re-stacked and unfornately for me re-stacked once again and left until we took care of more important things like toilets (yah!!), and walls and heat and lighting.
It's now January 2011 and the kids are back at university. Our two weeks of holidays, relaxation, food and drink are over. Remember my little story at the start of the blog....well, this is that grime hardened on the tongue and groove of the boards. It needs to be scraped by hand (my hand) so the boards can be tightly reassembled.
This is after the scraping. It took about three weeks to clean the 2400 linear feet. It was a dirty dirty job.
Hey, that's me trying to look like I'm enjoying my work. At this point, I was sincerely questioning my sanity...who does this shit???? The only worse job was the insulation removal...better be worth it eh!
Ross has such a look of concentration on his face. We needed to sand all four sides to further clean the edges and check for missed nails. I think the only reason he agreed to this crazy project was because he got to buy a whole lot of power tools....AAARRRR!!!!
The next step was planning the top of the boards. This removed some of the grime and gave the boards a more consistent thickness. Looking back, Ross and I agree we should have planed a few more times.
Now that we have the boards cleaned, it's time to get it down. First, we stapled down heavy flooring paper. I forget why we put it down...maybe as a make work project or to give me an opportunity to slam the staple hammer onto my thumb. Whatever the reason, I'm no longer allowed to use the staple hammer...not that I want to....I can find other ways to hurt myself don't you worry now.
Ross using the flooring hammer to attach the boards through the tongue...look ma no nails!
The last board!!! Look at those sexy man knees...someone needs new jeans.
Your probably thinking right now....that's one ugly floor...what were they thinking....you just wait for the magic. Hey...it's Fabbie!!!
Do you remember snowmeggadon last Wednesday? It was so bad in Alliston, it was like a blizzard inside as well. Actually, thats a whole lot of dust. The vaccuum on the drum sander kept clogging. We had to stop every few minutes to clean out the machine. Smarty pants fixed the problem...there was a piece of paper jammed in the vaccuum intake that was blocking the suction....someone returned the rental without cleaning it....shame!!! After that set back, things got a whole lot better.
So we sanded for two ten hour days and still had low spots that Ross had to use the edge sander to clean out. Our backs were so stiff and sore we could barely move....Ibuprofen for everyone!!
Looking a little better
Looking a lot better.
Hardwood such as maple does not stain very well, it tends to stain blotchy. After doing a little surfing on the web, we discovered a 2part shellac 1part methyl hydrate mix that will seal the grain and allow the stain to evenly coat the wood. After it dries, a quick sanding and we are ready to stain.
The stain is finished up to the white cloth. We stopped at intervals to wipe the excess stain off the floor; on hands and knees.
We found this floor buffer in the basement. It's from the 1960 but it worked like a charm to buff the stain into the surface.
Applying the first of three coats of varnish. We used Fabulon; the finish used for bowling alleys. It will give a very nice hard finish.
After three days of fumes, sanding and recoating we are done!!! So the moral of the story....don't try this at home!!!
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