Carpet catcher

Its time to start talking about what we have done! Its been 8 months and thankfully we have taken a lot of pictures. After the painting of every room, the first things we tackled were the floors.  I like being barefoot.  That was just not possible with this house. Talk about yuck. The first thing was to remove the germ infested carpeting from the upstairs room.  I gave some sneak peaks of this project earlier, but I hope this explains a bit more about how we accomplished this easy task.

Studio / bedroom

We designated one room upstairs to be the carpet catcher.  Began cutting and ripping until it was all pulled up. At the end we were able to roll the carpet, bag the padding (yuck) and take one trip to the dump to deposit it all. We then began removing the carpet tacking which was not so complicated once we got a small pry bar and a painters multi-tool.  There were staples everywhere and we were able to remove them easily. It took a couple hours per room.

Office / bedroom with carpet

Office / bedroom pre-sanding

There was a lot of paint that had been sprayed on the floors in every room.  we used the shopvac to remove remaining dust and staples. 


Working well into the nights that week we used a cheep orbital sander, which we hooked to our shop vac to keep the dust down.  Started with 40 grit, then moved on to 80 grit, then a final 120 grit. The room was a bit dusty, we covered the door way with plastic sheeting and kept the windows open mostly as long as it was not breezy. Working in 4 hours shifts we finished sanding one room in about a day.

Master bedroom with all materials 40 grit process

We vacuumed, swept, vacuumed and swept and damp mopped. We began to oil the floors with boiled linseed oil and a chip brush.  I used the brush to get under the edges of the moulding and up against the painted wood work. 

Using a deck stain applicator we applied more linseed until the floor was covered. this only took about and hour.  Using clean dry cloth I soaked up and rubbed in any spots that were puddling or showing too much shine.

Voila! Let dry for 12-24 hours and pretty floors. This wood is the original 1921 hardwood floors in our home. Using a machine would be too much for them. In some spots the wood is thin and in need of repair but they are lovely.  The linseed oil will protect them, as they did in 1921. I will need to apply another coat in a year or two, but it sure is better than other treatments.  A coat of hard wax may be an option we go with later, but we have to live here now!