Renovate 711 sq ft of floors
Room | Dimensions | Square footage | perimeter |
---|
Master Bedroom | 15’04” x 14’08” | 225 | 60 |
Red Room | 15’04” x 11’00” | 169 | 53 |
Home Office | 10’08” x 11’01” | 118 | 44 |
Bedroom One | 11’07” x 8’07” | 99 | 40 |
Bedroom Two | 11’08” x 8’07” | 100 | 41 |
Master Bedroom
Red room
Bedroom One
Bedroom Two
Home Office
(Over the next two years, I will strip all the remaining floors).
711 sqft in total with 238 ft of perimeter (210 ft of trim allowing for doorways)
Back in April I picked up the keys to my new home - an 1850’s colonial wreck . . . It had been unloved for decades, empty for three years and prior to that, the previous owner had 18 cats. The surveyor said the bones were good and that included the original floor boards. The goal was to complete 5 rooms before we moved in at the end of June. I wanted to paint all walls, trim, doors and ceilings. Replace light fixtures and other fittings. Install blinds. And renovate the floors.
After some research and conversations on permies, I came to the conclusion that the boards are old growth white pine. (White pine is a magnificent tree which can grow to 180’ or more. It was a good source of lumber in the 1850’s. Alas very few old
trees still exist.)
Floor previously restored - probably white pine
I love wooden floors and wanted to restore them even if they’d never been intended as a finished surface. Two rooms had previously been stripped but the varnish was worn and an unnatural looking yellow. The standard of work was poor - exposed nailheads, areas under radiators not stripped, no filling between the boards. The other three rooms had carpet. I don’t like carpet, I really don’t like inheriting someone else’s carpet and I’m allergic to cats and the carpets contained a lot of cat products.
Removing carpet and sanding floors is something I did twenty years ago, so I roughly knew what needed to be done. This time though, I wanted to do it differently.
I started in the Red Room, which had a thick carpet that stank of cat wee. This room proved to be the most challenging.
I started near the door and removed an area big enough to understand what I was dealing with. Under the carpet was carpet underlay then a layer of kitchen / bathroom tiles made of a brittle man made material. They were glued to half inch plywood that was nailed to the boards. Under the ply was a tough brown paint which is used in the hallway and on the stairs.
Doorway investigation
Other peoples carpet
I put together a plan:
The carpet was constructed from manmade materials and stank. I’ve used carpet in the past for garden projects but only when it’s made of natural materials. I wasn’t going to keep this one, so it would be cut into 2ft strips, rolled up and bagged before disposal.
The tiles could be pried off the plywood with a cats paw / crow-bar.
The plywood I could reuse in the basement as I wanted to put down a floor on the rooms that had bare
concrete.
I tested the paint for lead and it was lead free. It could be removed with a heat gun and then sanded. I decided against hiring a floor sander. I have done this in the past but you still have to pay for materials and the sheets aren’t cheap. I would buy myself a 4inch belt sander. It would take longer but keep cost and waste down. Once I was finished i could use the sander for other
wood related projects.
Execution didn’t go to plan. The carpet came up easily enough but underneath the underlay was thick layer of dust / sand so I bought a shop vac as it would wreck my domestic vac and I wanted a good filter. (The shop vac has been used extensively and when it broke, I fixed it and earned a
BB).
Rolls of carpet ready for bagging and disposal
Sand and dust under carpet
Tile removal
My neighbour had a dumpster I could use in exchange for a hundred bucks. He was filling it with the gnarly parts of a tree he had cut down. I ended up harvesting all the wood, so he let me use the dumpster for free as it dramatically reduced the weight, far in excess of the weight of materials I was adding. The carpet, underlay, batons, tiles and plywood also went in the dumpster. The plywood was nailed with barbed nails every 8 inches in both directions. Removing whole sheets was impossible. I resorted to cutting the sheets into 2’ by 2’ sections and prying off with a cats paw and crowbar. It was also old and had lots of delamination.
Cutting ply in a 2 by 2 grid
Removing the ply
Using a Japanese handsaw for edge pieces
Many many hundreds of nails left behind
Old ply ready for disposal
I’ve used a heat gun and scraper to remove paint before and although it takes time, it minimises waste. It took me over an hour to remove a square foot. I have no idea what kind of paint was used - it was pretty heat resistant and didn’t come up cleanly. The previous owner worked in construction. He’s also my neighbour so I had a chat about with paint. He was a bit vague on details but I got the impression it was from and industrial installation he worked and I heard him mention epoxy(!), so not a regular domestic paint. I experimented with a 40 grit sandpaper but it quickly turned the belt to a smooth brown hot plastic mess. My neighbour suggested paint stripper. I bought a small tub of bright orange citric paint stripper and it worked to a certain degree. I set to to strip the whole floor which took a couple of days and was pretty gross and very messy work. The results were far from ideal and I had to wait another day for everything to dry before sanding. Sanding was a disaster, there was enough paint left that the belt gummed up pretty quickly.
First round with citristrip
Unsuccessful paint striping
I did some more research, reached out to permies and found an alternative paint stripper, one that claimed to be 100% eco friendly. I applied it with a paint roller and covered it with plastic sheets and left it over night. It was little better but still far from ideal.
Applying second kind of paint stripper
Overnight soak under plastic
Tools I was using
Washing off the chemicals
My conversation on permies lead me to buying a Paintshaver Pro - a nine hundred dollar powertool. The tool uses a highspeed disk with three teeth to cut the paint clean off the surface. I bought the powerful 9amp model as it could cut through nails as well. It was a great investment and saved me a huge amount of time, chemicals and the only waste was the paint which was sucked up by the attached shop vac.
Paintshaver Pro - the mutts nuts
2 hours of work - 7 boards done
Finally, 90% of the floor, paint free.
I also tackled the two small back bedrooms. They also had cat contaminated carpet, underlay, kitchen tiles and ply. One had another layer of flooring which appeared to be an early composite. I worked on these at the same time to make use of the dumpster and when paint stripper was doing it’s thing or drying.
Removing additional floor in bedroom two
This is why I wore thick trousers, knee pads and sturdy boots even though this attic bedroom was frequently in the high 90’s.
The other two rooms were much simpler as they had already been stripped. I used the paint shaver to remove the old varnish and then sanded with 40 followed by 80 grit to remove the small rings the shaver sometimes left, even out irregularities and smooth any remaining protruding nails and screws.
Exhaust pipe from shop vac out the window because the dust free exhaust air is hot
Master bedroom cleared and ready for sanding. PPE kit laid out.
First round of sanding in the home office
I used a painters tool to clean out all the gaps between boards.
That’s a lot of grime - plus random missing board section
There were many defects - large gaps between boards, evidence of an old bathroom, missing boards - all needed fixing. Here’s how I fixed the gaps:
Wide and deep gap
I used a router to create a uniform channel
I used some left over lumber from a previous project to make strips to fill the gaps
Cut and planed to size
Installed
Ready for sanding
Sanded flush
Here’s how I fixed the missing sections of boards:
Random whole in the floor - probably an old vent system
Removed just under 3/4 an inch
3/4 inch board to fill the hole
Board screwed in place before sanding
Holes left by old plumbing installation
Squaring off the sides
Marking out area to remove with router
Cutting rabbet
Ready for infill board
Board installed
I needed to fill the remaining smaller gaps between boards, cracks and knotholes.
After sanding with 120 and then 240 grit, I filled the gaps in one of the smaller bedrooms with natural cordage made of sea-grass. This was ok, but not the finish I was after. I’m barefoot most of the time so I wanted a smooth finish that felt nice underfoot. (The wife wasn’t impressed with the “knitting” - her words for the sea-grass solution. She was ok with it in the one room, but I needed a better solution for the other four.)
Sea-grass gap filler
I settled on Woodwise, Wood Patch after more research. I filled every gap, knothole and crack, sanded with 60 grit once it was dry, typically the next day, and then repeated as there was some shrinkage in bigger gaps.
Applying woodpatch
First application
First round of sanding
After sanding
Second round of woodpatch
When you remove carpet, you can end up with a gap between the baseboard and the floor. I wanted to fill this gap with trim that matched the detail on the top of the baseboard. To do this, I would make my own trim.
Shop bought trim is perfectly engineered, primed for painting, comes in standard lengths and is quick and easy. It’s also expensive, you have no idea what exactly it’s made of, what toxic gunk was used in it’s creation and what kind of finish it has. You’re also at the whim of the store in terms of profile.
I bought 10ft boards which I could rip down into three two by ones, run them through a table router then paint, cut and install at a fraction of the cost and have total control over the whole process. I estimated I’d need 240ft of trim allowing for 10% waste. Although I’m working on five rooms, there are many more rooms to do, including halls, corridors and landings, so investing in this process also made sense in the long run.
I bought the materials, set up my saw horses on the driveway and ripped 240ft of two by ones.
I bought and setup a table router that accepted the large bit that matched the profile I wanted. My small battery powered router wasn’t up to a job of this scale. The table router will gets lots of use on other projects.
I made my trim and then gave it two coats of paint to match the colour of the appropriate room.
I had now deconstruct a lot of someone else’s handiwork. I have grown to hate nail guns and barbed / ridged nails. I decided to install all the trim with screws so if the next person who owns this place wants to remove the trim and install carpet, it can be easily removed without damaging the baseboard and potentially reinstalled. I found some really nice slender screws with a small hex head that could be self driven into the trim without pre-drilling. This made the job a lot quicker and the trim was securely anchored to the existing baseboard. First I had to disconnect the cast-iron radiators, clean up the floor and apply tung oil. I left this task to the end because I needed help moving them and up until now I was running solo.
Measuring, cutting and dry fitting
Before installing the trim, I put down two coats of tung oil next to the baseboard. I could then install the trim after it had dried and then finish the floor with two more coats of tung oil.
Trim installed and first coat of tung oil
Second coat of tung oil
Second coat in the master bedroom
Home office finished and occupied
I estimate that I have spent two days a week over a twelve week period working on the floors, somewhere in the region of 200+ hours. I spent roughly 20 hours over 5 days on paint removal solutions that didn’t work, so 4 sqft per hour. (It’s also taken me seven hours to write this report including selecting and editing the pictures!).
For future projects I estimate my time at 5 to 8 sqft per hour depending on the starting point. The work was backbreaking and very uncomfortable during the summer months. Most of the time I was wearing heavy boots, knee pads, thick trousers, gloves, ear protection, eye protection and a dust mask.
Here’s a list of all my costs, excluding sales tax:
Tools
Shop Vac + extra pipes: $180
Paintshaver Pro: $924
Belt Sander: $353
Router, bits and table: $443
Total: $1900
Consumables
Woodwise (4 gallons) : $173
Tung Oil (4 gallons) : $234
4 x 24 sanding belts (4 packs) : $80
Sanding disks : $22
Citristrip (3 half gallon tubs) : $81
SmartStrip (2 gallons) : $114
Trim boards : $102
Screws: $44
String: $14
Paint brushes / rollers: $26
Heavy duty trash bags: $30
Total: $839
Tools I already owned:
Crow-bar
Cats paw
Knife
Metal trash can
Circular saw
Multitool
Off cuts for filling floor
Hand sander
Personal protection equipment
Extension cables
Clip on work lights
Saw horses
Japanese saws
Clamps
Mitre saw
Paint scrapers
Going forward, I have all the tools for the rest of the floors. (I can
sell the paintshaver with little depreciation - they go for a lot on ebay.) Consumables work out at just under a dollar per square foot.
Thank you for reading this far and especially if you are the review . . . Another tricky one but hopefully no piano factor.
Cheers, Edward