'Til It Shines

Many old houses have been through a lot. At the very least, someone at some time probably had the bright idea to install wall-to-wall carpeting. Now, in a cold climate, I can see where this might be attractive, as W2W will definitely keep the room warmer, but in temperate Point Loma, I can't imagine what they were thinking! When we bought our home in 1996, we intended to pull out the carpeting, as we had noticed the floor showing in the closets and dreamed of seeing those beautiful golden hues throughout the house.

In these photos you can see that the floor we eventually uncovered (you know how it goes, it took a years to pull it all up because we had to keep moving the furniture) was not in that bad of shape.  We cleaned it with TSP and sanded it a little bit, and it looked pretty good.  What wasn't perfect we could cover with a rug.  When we were preparing to move to San francisco we thought that the time was right to refinish the floors.  As these types of projects go, it's not too expensive and the results are amazing.    

Step 1: Move all of the furniture out of your house. Step 2: Watch in amazement while the floor refinishers tape plastic wrap all over your strategic areas of your home (e.g., windows, fireplace, built-ins). Step 3: Leave the house, because those sanders make a LOT of noise.  See the photo to the left for a view of the partially sanded living room and dining room.  You can see the difference in the color of the old floor ("color" being a euphemistic term for wood stain and more than 70 years worth of use) and the sanded floor if you look at the right edge of the photo.

Step 4: If you do come back to the house, watch out for the really long extension cords that they use to run the sanders. Step 5: Be happy that you don't have to clean-up all the dust. A quality refinishing job depends on getting rid of all the dust before applying stain (not necessary if you have high quality wood) and the sealer or polyurethane finish. Step 6: Come back in 3-5 days, after the floor has dried completely, and admire your work!

Wow, you did a great job!

Look at that SHINE!