About the Floors

We love the floors in the second story of Hardy House.

The floors had been painted over but we knew they were variable width pine floors, original to the house. We wanted to do everything we could to save them. The widths went to about 11" though most were less than this, typically 6-10".

During the construction phase we asked that whenever the contractor had to remove a piece of the structure, floors especially, that he save the pieces. By doing this we were able to make any repairs in the floor upstairs. Okay, Dave was able to do the repairs.

It took a while but Dave was able to sand the floors upstairs. We tried to work with remover but it just made a gooey mess. We decided to just use the sander that we rented from The Home Depot.

The floors sanded beautifully. Dave did a fantastic job.

We next put two coats of polyurethane on them and that really brought out the red color of the pine. They are beautiful. We have decided to wait on the last two coats until the rest of the work is done. We also covered the finished floors with rosin paper (a roll costs about $10 and we only needed one) so if something drops or spills on them, there is some protection. I will have to add pictures and costs to this section later.

Floor Needs
We had to rent the orbital floor sander twice as we underestimated (as usual) the time it would take for us to get the job done. We also underestimated the amount of sandpaper packs we would need.
$240.00 rental for the floor sander

What we didn't anticipate is how much sandpaper we would go through because we were sanding old "painted" floors. They just became a gooey mess and gobbed up the sandpaper. Here's our sandpaper totals:

9 packs of 24 grit
10 packs of 36 grit
3 packs of 80 grit
2 packs of 120 grit

Total cost to refinish the floor inlcuding 2 gallons of polyurethane, 1 gallon of mineral spirits and a container of wood filler: $489.80

Advice: Because you can take back the sandpaper you don't use, stock up on as much as you can when you leave the store. There is nothing worse than having to stop work to go to the store to get more supplies. Not to mention we couldn't get the job done with one rental of the sander but had to rent it twice. You can read into this to mean mega more dollars spent.

Advice: Get the older sander. It's very heavy but it makes good contact with the floor. The newer models are lighter and bounce around more.

Advice: Definiately use a respirator if you use the oil-based polyurethane.