home remodeling - show it

[wally]

half the tile i put down is covered by the washer and dryer.

either deck and pond or guest bath is next.

[adamturman]

Originally Posted by standard

I had an electrical contractor come out to look at wiring up my garage, and when i mentioned electrical baseboards he actually got MAD at me. granted, he's all eco-friendly or whatever, decent guy. but he was like "they're so inefficient, they'll waste so much money," blah blahblah. sort of made me feel like a jerk.

Yeah, I had a bunch of different quotes on different heat (gas/electric/coil). I couldn't afford to do plumbing ($14k with footings) so a hotwater heater was out of the question. The heated floor seemed like a lot of money for just heating the floor, so I opted for the electric heat. We'll see how it goes I guess.

[dennyschmickle]

I actually finished all this madness up about a week ago, but am just now getting around to posting these pictures.

This process was BRUTAL. I suppose it just seems that way because I vastly underestimated how much it would take to sand off the old polyurethane, then the wax, and then the stain. But it was super hot the week that I decided to do this, and of course you have to just open the windows, turn on the fans, and hope for a breeze. I think I sweated off about 80 lbs.

The dust wasn't TOO bad, as the sander has a vacuum and there was a bit of a current pushing the extra fine stuff out the back door. Lots of periodic sweeping, and the leaf blower came in handy.

ok, here we go...


BEFORE


I didn't hate the color, but it was kind of dark for my taste. But that was the least of our issues. As previously mentioned, the poly was literally cracking and flaking off because the tards who sold us the place didn't sand THEN poly, then just threw a new coat on top of the old stuff. Well, underneath the old stuff was a coat of WAX which caused the new coat to not stick. You could be standing barefooted, and shift your weight, and a big flake of poly would come up with your foot. Not cool when you have a growing baby who will inevitably want to eat that stuff.

BAD




First or second round of sanding


It took about 3 rounds of sanding to get through to the bare wood. You can see spots of varnish and poly that remain here.





More sanding, getting through the old stuff:



I think this was towards the end of the sanding


You can see the edges here, where the big sander couldn't get right up to the edge:


Edges finished with a little belt sander I picked up


First coat of waterbased polyurethane. The color kind of came back here as you can see.


the stuff


dries clear, of course.

Dry first coat. I don't have pictures of the second.





Done.
We went with a satin finish, as the gloss was just a bit much.It really lightens up the entire place. I love it. But I'll never do it again.

[poguemahone]

that looks terrible Denny.

you're a failure and embarrassment.

now i have to go gouge out my eyeballs.

[dennyschmickle]

the abbreviated version.

[standard]

it looks like a nice job, denny. why didn't you pry off your kick trim to get closer to the edge? that's the beauty of kicktrim... it hides boo-boos.

[andydiesel]

damn.

denny is the master man.

[poguemahone]

tom just said you're stupid. you gonna just sit there on your poly floor and take it?

[standard]

those upright sanders are sort of a tradeoff. they sand a LOT slower than the old conventional type, but you're way less likely to fuck up. I did a terrible job with one of those on my office floor, but it's because i was too impatient.

[strawberryluna]

Originally Posted by dennyschmickle

the abbreviated version.

why didn't you just say that the first time?

LAWL!!!!!!

looks awesome. my parents pretty much got divorced while rehabbing a colonial house in philadelphia, so GOOD WORK SCHMICKLES!