Now that the structure of the closet was built new flooring had to be laid before the door jamb, door casing, and base molding could be installed. We were under the gun to get the floors done because you can’t do any work in there until everything has dried. Our schedule allowed for 3 days, luckily we started the night before. Breaking down the flooring process we had to:
Buy new flooring
Make the sub floor level and close up old duct hole
Lay the new flooring
Sand down new and old floors
Clean up dust
Select stain color and apply
Apply polyurethane
The floors in our house are standard 2-1/4″ red oak hardwoods so knew what material we were looking for and went to Lumber Liquidators to get it on order. At some point Mace decided it would be a really great idea to refinish the master bedroom floors (which would be a first for both of us) instead of just the closet. I wasn’t so sure because of the added time but they did need some TLC and it would be nice just be 100% done with this room and not have other major projects to do in the future. Obviously he got his way.
We had to close up the old duct line hole and add the subfloor (by adding blocking underneath and plywood as the subfloor) in order to lay the new floor.
Our house has settled over the years which caused the subfloor to be uneven. Here’s a shot of that and it also shows the hot water line that we needed to create a box around so it’s not exposed (tons of little details in this project!).
Then we had to sand down the subfloor till it was level so the new floor wouldn’t buckle (Friday 7:30pm)
When we were in the demo phase we had to consider where the new flooring would start. We chose to have it start at the door jamb so the first piece would have to wrap around the edge of the jamb (above pic you can see where a sliver will wrap around the door jamb). Here I am taking out the last piece during demo, see its not just Mace doing stuff around here!
Once the wood arrived we could start installing the new floor. He was also very excited to use his new compressor and nail gun (I gave it a try too!). First piece down! (Friday 9pm)
Well not so fast, I mean it can’t be THAT easy! Because of how we had to lay the wood into the existing floor (the new floor tongue going into the old floor groove) it we put a nail in the new floor groove. Well when you get to the next row the tongue won’t fit in because there’s a nail in there, so that way didn’t work. When flooring is laid it starts on one side of the room with the groove against the wall and runs to the other side of the room with nails going into the tongue. Our floors were laid starting on the closet wall so we were basically laying flooring backwards to get the new floor in. Caused us to pause for a minute (or hour) and figure out a new way to nail the flooring in. (Friday 10pm)
Which we did and then we were able to get started again. (Friday 11pm)
We got into a pretty good rhythm with me laying out each row ahead of time, which Mace would then nail down, and measure and cut the last piece as needed. You can also see the duct hole covered with the new subfloor. (Saturday 12am)
And then we had a new closet floor! (Saturday 1:30am)
So pretty!!
After a few hours of sleep we were at home depot renting a high-powered oscillating sander (we chose oscillating over the more high-powered drum sander because its more forgiving if you make a mistake) and gathering other supplies. There was also some prep work to get ready like removing the covers from the baseboard heat and taping off the outlets so dust didn’t get in them. Man those floors really did need some attention. (Saturday 1:30pm)
And then we were off sanding and pretty excited about how quick the process seemed to be going! The new floor sanding (to open the pores) went quick and majority of time was spent on sanding the existing floors. I was doing the harder to reach areas with a small hand sander… (Saturday 3pm)
While Mace concentrated on the main flooring. You can see poly was sticking in some areas and we knew we’d had to hit it again but didn’t think it would take long (Saturday 4:30pm)
And I got to operate the big sander too (not for long though, he obviously preferred this piece of equipment over the hand sander).
We had most of the poly gone but the sander wasn’t taking all the poly off around the joints of the flooring and it actually seemed like it wasn’t doing much even though we kept going over and over the same spot (Mace vowed to learn how to use a drum sander for next time, which neither of us wanted to do ANYTIME soon). So I got busy on the joints with the hand sander. (Saturday 6pm)
We were pretty sick of sanding by 8pm on Saturday and decided to call it quits and meet some friends for a drink to recharge. The next day we got up and hit the room again one last time. Under the heaters were tough because that was just using my elbow grease. (Sunday 11am)
We had the floors sanded down pretty good so Mace went around with wood filler on the spots that needed it. (Sunday 11:15am)
And then we had to start removing all the dust from the room and floor . We took rags and a Swiffer to wipe down all the walls and windows so they would be paint ready. (Sunday 1:30pm)
And then vacuumed everything and wiped down the floors with a rag. (Sunday 2pm)
We were pretty pumped and it looked brand new even with no stain on it. (Sunday 2:30pm)
The stain color posed a challenge for us. I love dark hardwood and since we were redoing our room it made sense that if we were going to go dark now was the time to do it. We decided NOT to go dark and instead match the existing blond color for a few reasons.
We were afraid the darker color would really show any missed blond poly (blond would be less noticeable)
We weren’t sure when the other floors would get refinished, so didn’t love the idea of living with 2 different colored floors
I wasn’t really loving how the dark stain was looking on the oak (maybe I had gotten used to blond floors)
When we were laying the floors I was also testing out stain colors on scraps of the new flooring. I picked various colors from Minwax and Varathane and tested 1 and 2 coats to see changes in color. I did not want our new floors to be as “yellow” as the existing ones and finally landed on a color I thought would work.
Decision made and time to start staining our freshly sanded floors!
We started in the back left corner of the room so we didn’t end up painted in a corner and with both of us working it went pretty quick and did 2 coats. I will say that when the first few sections of stain went on I was PISSED, it looked so yellow to me which I didn’t want (you can see the yellow stain bucket). But after a while it absorbed in, I calmed down, and I ended up really liking the result. I had a pretty hot outfit on too!! (Sunday 2:35pm)
Then it was time for poly and we were feeling pretty good thinking we were in the home stretch. The mop application went on pretty quick so we thought “only 2 coats of poly and then we’re done ahead of schedule”!! (Sunday 11pm)
Well after the 2nd coat dried we noticed there were some spots where the poly didn’t look like it spread evenly, so we did a 3rd coat using the same mop application. (Monday 5:30am)
We still noticed the same thing when it dried, so for the 4th coat I got back on my hands and knees and applied it with a brush just like the stain and I took a few hours to make sure it was as even as I could get it. (Monday 6pm). This seemed to work a better and then we had awesome looking floors! (Tuesday 6pm, right on schedule)
You might have noticed the closet flooring is a slightly different color than the original floors but that’s because they’re almost 60 years old and new flooring is new. Wood is a natural material so if its not all from the same lot there can be variations. We also went with a water based poly instead of oil based, which we learned scratches a little easier than oil based but it also doesn’t have the yellow undertone (and I didn’t want yellow floors). We were pretty proud of ourselves for how they turned out being our first attempt! A little before and after.
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