in the morning i fly back to so-cal, have to show up at work for a few days, then will drive back up here with the girls. until we’re all up here, this is how the house sits.

moved the sofas into the living room. as un-manly as the whole “like to soak in the cast iron tub” thing is… i reckon that being as i carried the large sofa in, by myself (and i do mean carried: not dragged, straight dead lifted and carried on my shoulder), things are evened out. carried in the smaller two, as well… but they’re not as impressive as the large sofa.

the floors are hardened/dried well enough for moderate traffic. in 2 days they’ll be completely cured.

the rear bedroom is a different story. all the staples and tack strip are gone, now… but the damned linoleum remains. i leveled in the area that a small amount was removed from… and am thinking the best thing to do for now would be lay something else on top of it all. i was thinking 12×12 linoleum (not vinyl). linoleum is made from linseed oil, cork, cotton, wax and a few other natural materials. it’s 100% hypo-allergenic (unless you’re allergic to cotton… then you’ve got bigger things to be concerned with), non-toxic, durable and clean. ok so it’s ugly, too. vinyl on the other hand, emits quite a few chemicals into the air for at least the first year after it’s been laid… and quite poisonous in case of a fire (one reason vinyl floors are not allowed in sleeping quarters, under many building codes). anyway, i was thinking about letting zoe pick out a linoleum tile she likes. then, when the new bedrooms are complete upstairs, strip this all down to the wood and refinish.

patched area:

more floor.
2 coats of varathane water-borne polyurethane with hardener, 1 wet coat without hardener, in the dining room and living room. it started pouring rain and the temp dropped to 62f (16c) in a matter of minutes… raising the tack level of the polyurethane quite a bit…. resulting in some impurities in the last coat. being a non-hardened coat, it’ll all buff out. needs to be buffed before the layer of acrylic wax goes on in a few weeks, anyway. in another 4 hours, the floors can safely be walked on (barefoot or with socks). 4 more and i can move some of the furniture inside (on cotton pads), because i gotta go back to LA tomorrow… don’t think that leaving our sofas on the porch is the greatest of ideas.

dining room, still (very) wet:

living room, 5 minutes after the last application:

cool pocket doors between the living room and dining room:

the front bedroom just has one coat of un-hardened polyurethane, for now. not entirely happy with the outcome of the sanding, particularly the part along one wall that rebecca is giving me a hard time about
i’ll feather/blend it in better, sometime later… then put 2 more coats of poly.
the hall still needs to be stripped and blended into the front bedroom, and the back bedroom…… damn that room.

the back bedroom still has linoleum on it. it’s likely staying for a bit. i figure it’ll take roughly 20 hours to remove it, another 4 hours of sanding to level it… then stain and poly. for now, just plain don’t have the time before leaving.

soon, we’ll have to decide if the back bedroom’s floors will be done before moving everything into it… or later, after the bedrooms upstairs are done. i’m a bit torn between the two, as the linoleum is clean (save for a 1 square foot area i removed)… and it would be nice to actually use it as a bedroom. or, on the other hand, it would be nice to finish the floor and be done now.

* for today.

front bedroom:

dining room:

living room:

stained 1 coat 75/25 mix of minwax oil-based dark walnut stain and odorless mineral spirits, hand rubbed with cotton.
tomorrow i can screen sand with more mineral spirits to bring out the grain of the wood more…. then decide on a final finish:

the wood looks good in person; a bit dark in the photos. it actually came out darker than i intended, but after a screen sanding tomorrow it’ll brighten up a bit.

not the manliest of things…. but after working for 14 hours, the cast iron tub rocks. spent an hour in it, tonight. too sore/tired to get out of it…

(note the vinyl flooring… it’s coming out, 1″ hexagon tile going in… more work to do)

today has been eaten up, thus far, with arranging to have a storage container delivered before the movers arrive… and getting the city to issue a permit so it can sit on the street. need the container because we can’t move our furniture and belongings into the house due to our apartment being infested with some kinda mold i can’t pronounce, let alone spell. it’s black, and sounds scary. the furniture all needs to be cleaned in some magical voodoo-ish way (ok, hepa vacuum and some anti-mold stuff) before it’s moved in. gives me a bit more time with the floors, at least…

front bedroom, after 2 passes with 36grit, 2 passes with 60 grit, 1 pass with 80grit. still need to do the areas the large floor sander won’t reach.

dining room, after the floor sander…

living room, after the floor sander, and after 3 passes with the handheld RO sander, edges done… can finally see the detail work in the corners…

the floors are all quarter sawn old-growth douglas fir. best guess is the tree was around 200 years old when it was sent to the mill, by the look of the grain. fir is generally a softwood, but the really old trees were dense… this stuff is about as hard as oak… and went through a lot of sandpaper. driving 6d nails through it feels like trying to drive 16d nails through concrete.

the floor sander is about 85lbs, 4.5HP, and feels like tug-o-war against a drunk mule. no fun to load in/out of the volvo, either… nowhere to get a good grip, awkward, and slippery yet quite pointy in parts. lost a bit of blood on it, while trying to maneuver it into the trunk, in the rain, after ~12 hours of use.

still need to strip the armored floor (linoleum) from the rear bedroom… and strip the hallway. due to the size/shape of the hall, the big sander won’t fit. just going to strip the stain, hand scrape and sand with the handheld RO.

something in the house that’s actually in perfect condition… 1920s cast bronze, leaded glass, retrofitted to modern-ish lights most likely sometime in the 50s.

more pulling of linoleum in the front bedroom…

6.5 hours later, and all the linoleum is out. the 16gallon shop vac was filled twice, with small pieces…

after 2.5 hours of hand scraping to remove the tar paper backing of the linoleum, and some of the previous paint

so far i have about 14 hours of labor into that floor. i’ve drank 5 liters of water, and gone down 1 belt hole today. guess it’s at least good exercise…

the carpet in the hallway practically took itself out, compared to anything else in the house, thus far…
no matter what i can’t seem to get a good picture of it, due to the hall being completely void of light. the odd thing is i put a shop light in the hall, and it didn’t get any brighter. the only obvious possible reason for this is a black hole. a mighty small one, but enough to suck the light away.

luckily the black hole in the hall didn’t do more… because the one in the bedroom sucked my ego away. more linoleum, this time very, very well attached to the wood flooring.

this is after 1 hour of scraping, followed by 10 minutes of 35grit on the RO sander.

at this rate i figure the room would be done by this time next year. i did a quick experiment with boiling water, and it looks like heat helps a bit… so i’m off to home depot for a heat gun, then trader joe’s for dinner. after crying, of course.

but on the plus side…. here’s roughly 700lbs of old carpet and padding, removed!

another hour and a half of back breaking labor:

that’s about 1/4 of the front bedroom scraped.

removing the lovely brown plush carpeting:

carpeting removed, showing the lovely asbestos-laden ~80 year old linoleum:

nothing says “class” like wall to wall greaze-repelling linoleum flooring… a detail shot:

luckily the original installer of the linoleum half-assed the job and didn’t bother stripping the wax off the floors… so the tar-based sticky mess didn’t… well… stick. it peeled up in 4′ wide sheets with moderate effort.

the floor is in amazingly good condition, probably because of the linoleum that’s protected it for roughly 80 years. they’ll still need refinishing to even the color out (some of the tar adhesive discolored the wood, here and there)… but overall it’s quite nice. the white-ish stuff in the photo is actually floor wax, which scrapes off easily.

rear bedroom didn’t go as well. linoleum, but this stuff is stuck. it looks as if the linoleum was placed over the wood, before the wood was ever finished. this is the result of 20 minutes of a full on assult. i think it’s the floor assulting me, though…

the dining room wasn’t enough to stop me… had to continue with the living room…

i cut the carpet into 4′ lengths with a hook knife, rolled it up and pulled it out… followed by the padding. this stuff is heavy. like, really heavy, for carpet. it must have been pricey at the time, given the quality and the “lifetime warranty” tag found on it. still ugly as sin, though… pulling it out, revealed more beautiful floors:

the corner detail, in each corner of the the living room and dining room:

the floors really are beautiful… they catch the light and glow a warm, deep color. nothing compares to old-growth fir…
this is after 2 hours of staple removal, and vacuuming: