Indeed, a Turtle blog.

I have so many photos archived away, waiting for a post to accompany them. I called my sister the other day and she eagerly asked when i was planning to post about the hardwood floors that were done here months ago. She suggested I do another multi-story post, so we'll see how this one goes. I'll abbreviate the story so that it actually gets done and posted.

MOVING OUT
I literally had to move out of my house - all furniture stored in the shed and garage, the contents of the shed pulled out to the patio, the contents of the garage/shop pushed toward the front and crammed to make room.















ORIGINAL FLOORS
When I moved in, October 1993, the upper floor was covered in wall-to-wall 70s yellow shag carpeting. The flooring underneath was suitably warn and had knife marks where the installers had scored the underlay. Over time (and with the help of a couple feline friends - note the black spots) this floor has seen better days.










PREP WORK
I had to go through the house and pull the fir door frames prior to sanding. Also, you will note the patching on the walls; I figured since we were going this far, a fresh coat of paint wouldn't hurt!







THE SANDING BEGINS!
My friend Matt and his wife Liz stepped up to the plate to help with the grunt work. The first pass was with the heavy drum sander which will in fact leave waves in your floor if you don't control it well. My confidence was in Matt since he and his Dad had done numerous floors prior to mine. The dust was actually quite minimal, and the fresh wood smell at the end of the day was really quite amazing. I ended up sleeping in front of the fireplace that night.














IT'S ALL IN THE WRIST
My job between drum sander day and buff sander day was to go around each room and, with a palm sander, sand the perimeter to remove what the larger machines could not reach. The hardest to work on of all these areas was under the fireplace shelf. It was a 2.5 hour job to get that span to look like the rest of the floor!





REFINISHING BEGINS!

We started in the closet of the Master bedroom. It was my job to pour out the polyurethane. Matt had an applicator that made it a breeze to spread evenly.












A WHOLE NEW SPACE!
After two coats, we were done. The low-sheen finish turned out absolutely amazingly. Here is the office mostly back together. I made another project of refinishing the shelves here and some other pieces throughout the house. I'll post about that separately.




I'm almost settled in now. Perhaps around Christmas I'll have a wee party to celebrate new floors, not to mention a few other little victories along the way.