We like hardwood floors...they have so much more character to offer a room than the rental-grade carpet that we typically use when we don't have hardwoods. Below is the "before" picture of the floors, right after the carpet was pulled up. Sure, they look pretty bad...but we see the potential!
With the floor repairs completed, it's time to make them look better!
First, the floors are swept, vacuumed and damp-mopped to get up as much of the dirt and dust as possible. The above picture shows the difference between the wet and dry portions.
Once the floors are completely dry, a large steel wool pad is used in conjuction with a buffer. If you don't wait for the floor to dry, you will end up making a rusty mess!
These pads are available at commercial cleaning supply houses, and cost about $20 each. Since there was quite a bit of paint to remove, I went aggressive with a #2 (coarse) steel wool pad. I use the finer (#1 or #0) pads for light cleaning and wax removal, or as a follow-up after using the coarse pads. Another important tip is to make sure that you have removed every single nail and staple from the flooring before you start the scrubbing. If you don't, the pads can get caught and tear themselves to shreds.
Above is a picture of the same floor area in the bedroom that is shown 2 pictures previous (before the buffer picture). The paint came right up without too much effort and the floors are looking good!
Here's another view looking out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Remember that replacement plank in front of the laundry closet? Bet you can't pick it out from here! I know...not fair. So here's a close-up shot of the repair:
Now can you pick out the replacement planks?
Unfortunately, the paint in the living room didn't come up very well at all.
Even after agressive use with the steel wool, there was still too much paint left on the floor. More drastic tactics were needed, so I ran up to Home Depot and bought several 100-grit sanding screens. I then went over the floors in both the living room and the bedroom. Even though the bedroom had cleaned up well, using the sanding screens lightens up the wood as it removes the surface layer. It's this surface layer that retains the colored pigments of the stain used when the floors were laid.
After the sanding, another round of sweeping, vacuuming and damp-mopping was required to get rid of all the sawdust. Once this was done and the floors had time to dry, paste wax was applied to provide the finish.
I bet I know what you are wondering - "Paste wax? WTF! Why doesn't he use a polyurethane finish? It's actually pretty simple. With good 'ole fashioned paste wax, I can be walking on that floor 10 minutes after buffing it. If I went with the polyurethane, I would probably need to apply several coats, sanding between each one. When you add in the time it takes to do this, and the fact that the buffer was rented for $30/day...the wax seems pretty A-O-K.
To work with the wax, get on your hands and knees with a rag and apply it to a section of the floor small enough so that you can reach the whole area with the buffer without having to stand in the unbuffed areas. Really work it to force the oils into the wood. Once it dries with a haze, run over it with the buffer to bing up the finish. It's not much different than doing your car!
The entire process of steel-wooling, sanding and waxing took pretty much the entire weekend. But the floors sure look nice! Take a look at the picture below, and then compare it to the picture at the very beginning of this page. It's the exact same section, before and after.
Well, that's it for the floor project! I'll be updating the other project pages during the next few days. Stop back soon!