Floors Part 4

Finished the installation of the wood yesterday. Saturday, including final preparation and clean-up,  we spent about 6 hours and Sunday took about 11 hours.  Needless to say it was a lot of hard work. We were lucky on Sunday and had a friend help out, otherwise it would have taken a few more hours.

The glue is so sticky and hard to clean up that when we finished Sunday I threw away most of my tools. No way did I want to try and clean them again. The glue will stick to anything, imagine creamy melted marshmallows and multiply it by 1000, not to mention, once it drys good luck on getting it off.

Another issue was the 90% of the long planks were warped. So that added another challenging aspect, which ones to use and not use. However we only had so much wood and ended up using many of the warped ones. Of course the milling was not superb so some were not straight, I guess that is why they make wood filler.

Next up is to fill in any gaps with wood filler, sand, then apply polyurethane.

If anyone ever asks you to come over for a "fun" day of installing glue down hard wood floors....RUN LIKE HELL!!!!!!!

Floors part 3

We are getting closer to the end. Since the last post we have cleaned the floors, tested for moisture, and leveled (or attempted) the floors.  I say attempted because they were so bad it took three attempts with the leveling compound and a session of grinding down a ridge. It was a LOT of work. If I had a chance to do it again I would have ground down any high points then skim coated the entire floor.

Next weekend we will lay the floor and then the following week we will put the finish. Almost there.

Moisture test. Thankfully nothing.

One of the many gaps.

I first used just dots where it needed to be filled. Not the best way.

Latex primer, before the self level compound.

First attempt.

Finally got smart and did it a different way.  Looks like a battle plan.

Mr. Clean and a buffer

I knew those 20 years in the Marine Corps were not wasted. As I was trying to figure out how to remove the last of the tar I reflected on my many fond memories of Thursday field days (a field day is when you clean your room and outside areas)(the "fond memories" was sarcasm). So I decided to try and use a buffer with degreaser.

What do you know, it worked like a charm. It took about 5 hours to do both rooms but in the end it finally felt like we made progress. I will go over the floor one more time just to make sure it is clean of all tar/oil residue.

We still have the closet in the front bedroom to complete and then it is on to leveling the floor. Once the floor is level we will let the wood acclimate in the rooms for 7 to 10 days. Then we install.

Actually the floor is clean it is just stained

More %#&*!!%# Tar Paper

Today we mostly finished the office tar removal. It only took 2 solid weekends. Having never removed anything like this before we were unsure of how to approach it. obviously we did not want to use anything toxic or flammable since this was inside the house. So that meant no gasoline or kerosene and living in California it meant there was not much selection on stripping chemicals.

I first tried to use a propane torch that I borrowed from my boss however it did not work well at all. All it did was melt the tar.

We went with a brand called citrus stripper. It is low VOC, not toxic at all, it cost $41 a gallon and I would have needed around 3 or 4 gallons. It also does not work worth a crap. I followed the directions and left it on for around 3 hours. All it did was to smear it into a blackish blob.

A. Then did her research and came up with the idea of using boiling water and vinegar. Damned if it did not work and I only had to leave it on for about 3 minutes before scraping.

After we finished we then moved onto the new room where we decided to go ahead and rip out the existing floor. And underneath the two layers of stuff we found.......more Tar Paper.

To be continued.........

Safety First

After three hours that is all the stripper did

some of the removed tar

more removed tar with used blades. we had about 7 bags

more tar paper in the office :(

here we go again