The floor... FROM HELL!

So I finally have some free time. I don't know what to do with myself.
So I blog...

I thought I'd start out with the story of refinishing our hardwood floors. I have a few pix to go along with the great tale...

These are the original hardwood floors from 1949. The guy that fixed up the house tore out the carpet and under was this beautiful floor. They weren't in the best condition, but if we wanted we could have just moved in, but we wanted it to look GOOD and new.

Gar asked a friend of his that refinishes houses and asked if he refinished hardwood floor himself, and he said NO!!! He actually hires people to do it. It usually runs him about $2,500.00. Hearing that, we opted to do it ourselves. Yeah, fun project... NOT!

It was funny, every time we asked someone how they did their floors, or told people that we were going to do it ourselves, we got this concerned look... Like they were thinking, Good luck, have fun amatures . We chose to ignore those looks and just take on the project full force.

Being the type of person that doesn't think things through, i didn't take the best pix ever. I didn't get a really good BEFORE pix. So here are some pix where you can kinda see the floors.

(This is the first night Gar and I are in the house. Our first meal. Yes, I cried. As always. I looked at Gar and said "Oh, our first dinner in our very own house." After I said that, Niagara Falls....)

Anywho, you can see the floors pretty well in these pix. (Nice home cooked meal of Arbys, gotta LOVE the curly fires and arbys sauce!!!!)You can see that the floors aren't too bad, but worn in places and the varnish was coming off. (Isn't Gar so dang cute? Uummm nice arms babe! H.O.T.I.E!!!)

We read up on refinishing floors, asked some friends that do construction for a living and got some really great tips. We took the best tips and went to town. We rented a belt sander and Gar got to work.

First, let me foreshadow and say that if we are ever presented with the opportunity to refinish hardwood floors again, I would cry and then I would cough up the $2,500.00 and hire someone else to do it...

Sanding took up the majority of the time and effort and pain! Sanding was a HUGE job. There was saw dust everywhere, i mean eve-ry-where!! Gar did all of the belt sanding work, I did do all of the taping off. Here is a pix of Gar sanding. That is the master bedroom. We found under the old stain and varnish, a beautiful pine wood floor. We were very happy that the floor were in such great condition.

The sander didn't go all the way to the walls, so this is where I came in. I got the hand sander, (thanks to some friends that had some great hand sanders), I sat on the floor, hunched over and sanded the 3 inches the from the wall the belt sander left. My back, my hands and my forearms have NEVER been that sore before in my life, literally. My fingers were numb for a week, I'M not even kidding. This is the main reason that i would pay someone else to do it. I'm sure there is an easier way to get the edges and some great tool to do it with, but we didn't have it. And our backs have not been the same sense.

The sanding took altogether about 4 full days. The cleaning was a HEADACHE. You just don't have one clean up. You have to use belt sander with 3 different grades of sandpaper and clean all the dust up. Then us the softest grade of sandpaper and make it all smooth. Then clean it again. I swear, I'm still finding dust...

Here are the floors all sanded. B.E.A - UTIFUL!

After that was time to stain. This was a little nerve racking. We found the color we wanted, and crossed our fingers that it would look good. When we would get tips from friends on how to do it, we also go a TON of horror stories... So we tried to do opposite of those. Here you can see the color in contract to the bare wood. LOVE IT~

Gar did the coat of stain and we had to wait a good 24 hours for it to dry and set. Then we (by we, I mean Gar) had to put 2 coats of varnish. AND, in between the coats of varnish, buff it with this huge buffing machine that we rented, which then, created more dust. Then re-clean it all once again, then do the last coat of varnish. Then let it set and dry for 24 hours.

I failed to get some working phot's of Gar staining and varnishing. I was at PB working while he did it all. It was quiet the workout,from what I hear. I also failed to get some good AFTER pix... So the ones below will have to suffice!

Here are some finished pix. I stayed home from work one day to do some deep cleaning before we moved and Ang and the kids stopped by. Here you can see the finished product. Don't the floors look so freaking good.

We are so happy with the finished product. I can just cry.

We got all moved in, of course, so here is a pix of the floors with the furniture on them... Gar did such a great job. I must say that I seriously have the BEST husband ever. What a crazy job to jump into head first without every doing it before.

Aurora has been here I have not had time to take some really good pix of the house. I will do that next week after I clean and get things in their proper place.