18/06: Floors and Painting
Category: General
Posted by: The Agnew Family
I'm blending a few days here as I don't really want to relive each and every painful day of getting the house ready for refinishing the floors and painting. In retrospect, I really wonder why Ed and I did all the prep work ---- oh yeah, it saved a lot of money.
I think I talked about the big crack when I removed the wallpaper in May, but here it is all fixed up ready for priming. As the previous owners enjoyed busy walls, there were a lot of patch spots everywhere and in places you wouldn't imagine.
Most of the furniture was removed from the room but Ed kept the TV and kitchen table there for as long as possible. The wall with the large patch is primed as well as all the little the patches on the other walls. Ed doesn't paint unless it's with a spray gun so that's my handiwork.
The decorative splotching.
I put on 2 coats of primer and covered the splotches with the green as we weren't changing the paint colour. We like the colour plus it matches the area rug, so why change.
We moved the remaining items out of the room and taped the cupboards to keep the dust out --- by the way it did work.
At this point, we moved into the trailer as it gave us a bed and a kitchen. Ed didn't want to have to think about dumping the black tank so we used the bathroom in the basement. This worked out not too bad except I really didn't enjoy the middle of the night trips to the bathroom. Shouldn't complain too much though as mother nature co-operated and stopped the rain when I needed to use the loo in the middle of the night. I really love my little trailer so it was actually fun getting to live in it but by day ten Ed was ready to move back into the house --- I think he missed the big TV.
Glen, the fellow we hired to refinish the floors and paint, busy sanding the floors and creating much dust.
A woman's work is never done ... for some reason I was given the job of vacuuming.
First coat of the green paint. The guy at Home Hardware did a fantastic job of making matching paint, it was a 100 per cent match.
Painting the trim.
We ended up having the kitchen/family room and the main hallways plus trim painted. Glen paints a lot faster (and better) than I do. In two days he sanded the floor, put 2 coats on in the kitchen/family room, painted the trim in the kitchen/family room and hallways (and there's a lot of trim in the hallway as there are 10 door frames (I painted the doors because that's easy)) and put on one coat of paint in the hallway (just wanted to refresh it and we had enough paint left from when I painted it in 2009).
Up to this point everything had gone smoothly but unfortunately the tide changed. We wanted to put three coats of oil based polyurethane on the floor. The can says you can recoat in 4 to 6 hours and if you wait more than 10 hours you need to sand between coats. So Ed and Glen decided to try and do in one day to avoid sanding. Glen arrived at 7am (yes, Ed was up to help) and the first coat was on by 8:30am. Glen came back around 3pm to put on the second coat, finishing applying the coat about 4:30pm. When we check the floor around 9pm we realized that coat two was a disaster --- it was full of air bubbles, ripples, and blobs of dried polyurethane. Coat three was being delayed as we definitely needed to do something to try to fix the mess. In retrospect we think that coat one was not dry enough when coat two went on, plus the application method was introducing too much air into the polyurethane. When coat two was good and dry, the guys hand sanded it and coat three was applied. I'm not entirely happy with the results but I don't think Ed and I could live through refinishing again. Part of the problem was the non-straightness of the room which made it hard to apply the polyurethane following the grain of the wood. We've decided to live with the floor and when it bothers us too much will put in a new floor. That'll be a big job but it shouldn't be as dirty and definitely won't be as stinky.
I think I talked about the big crack when I removed the wallpaper in May, but here it is all fixed up ready for priming. As the previous owners enjoyed busy walls, there were a lot of patch spots everywhere and in places you wouldn't imagine.
Most of the furniture was removed from the room but Ed kept the TV and kitchen table there for as long as possible. The wall with the large patch is primed as well as all the little the patches on the other walls. Ed doesn't paint unless it's with a spray gun so that's my handiwork.
The decorative splotching.
I put on 2 coats of primer and covered the splotches with the green as we weren't changing the paint colour. We like the colour plus it matches the area rug, so why change.
We moved the remaining items out of the room and taped the cupboards to keep the dust out --- by the way it did work.
At this point, we moved into the trailer as it gave us a bed and a kitchen. Ed didn't want to have to think about dumping the black tank so we used the bathroom in the basement. This worked out not too bad except I really didn't enjoy the middle of the night trips to the bathroom. Shouldn't complain too much though as mother nature co-operated and stopped the rain when I needed to use the loo in the middle of the night. I really love my little trailer so it was actually fun getting to live in it but by day ten Ed was ready to move back into the house --- I think he missed the big TV.
Glen, the fellow we hired to refinish the floors and paint, busy sanding the floors and creating much dust.
A woman's work is never done ... for some reason I was given the job of vacuuming.
First coat of the green paint. The guy at Home Hardware did a fantastic job of making matching paint, it was a 100 per cent match.
Painting the trim.
We ended up having the kitchen/family room and the main hallways plus trim painted. Glen paints a lot faster (and better) than I do. In two days he sanded the floor, put 2 coats on in the kitchen/family room, painted the trim in the kitchen/family room and hallways (and there's a lot of trim in the hallway as there are 10 door frames (I painted the doors because that's easy)) and put on one coat of paint in the hallway (just wanted to refresh it and we had enough paint left from when I painted it in 2009).
Up to this point everything had gone smoothly but unfortunately the tide changed. We wanted to put three coats of oil based polyurethane on the floor. The can says you can recoat in 4 to 6 hours and if you wait more than 10 hours you need to sand between coats. So Ed and Glen decided to try and do in one day to avoid sanding. Glen arrived at 7am (yes, Ed was up to help) and the first coat was on by 8:30am. Glen came back around 3pm to put on the second coat, finishing applying the coat about 4:30pm. When we check the floor around 9pm we realized that coat two was a disaster --- it was full of air bubbles, ripples, and blobs of dried polyurethane. Coat three was being delayed as we definitely needed to do something to try to fix the mess. In retrospect we think that coat one was not dry enough when coat two went on, plus the application method was introducing too much air into the polyurethane. When coat two was good and dry, the guys hand sanded it and coat three was applied. I'm not entirely happy with the results but I don't think Ed and I could live through refinishing again. Part of the problem was the non-straightness of the room which made it hard to apply the polyurethane following the grain of the wood. We've decided to live with the floor and when it bothers us too much will put in a new floor. That'll be a big job but it shouldn't be as dirty and definitely won't be as stinky.