Refinishing 1943 Hardwood Floors, LOTS of pics!

I'm basically a hardcore DIY'er, (that's what I tell myself, anyhow) by now I'm sure you all know that. I've embarked on almost every remodeling project that this house could possibly handle in the last year and a half. This house was built in 1943. It was really well maintained, but it was plain. In my eyes, it was a blank canvas just BEGGING for me to unleash my creativity on it. Remodeling as a DIY'er was going to be easy, I was just SO sure of that, after all, I had YouTube and Pintrest and Google. Along the way, and throughout many large projects (cutting out walls, remodeling a kitchen, installing new plumbing, etc) I had to admit, remodeling wasn't easy at all. It is very worth it, and that is probably the only reason I find myself taking on project after project here.

My most recent project, was refinishing the original hardwood floors from 1943! These beauties were covered by awful ugly office type carpet, and I was nervous at first, because we weren't sure what we were going to find under the carpet. 

We found many spots where there was scratches, spray paint, dirt, and even old linoleum adhesive caked on the floors. By the entryway, there were black peel-and-stick vinyl tiles that had to be scraped up with a scraper and they left a horrible amount of sticky residue on the wood. It took my daughter and myself 3 hours to get these tiles off of the floor, and then I had to use almost a gallon of mineral spirits to get the sticky adhesive off. I also spent WAY too long with my little palm sander trying to get all of the white spray paint off of the floors before I accepted defeat and decided to rent the square buff sander from Home Depot. It was $39 for 4 hours, so that was worth saving my back. We moved all of the furniture out to the garage at that point.

  About a year ago, I had a ductless heat pump installed in the house (an HVAC company did that one, don't worry.) We have no air ducts since this house is so old, so prior to the ductless heat pump, there were baseboard heaters. In Washington State, there is also pretty much no air conditioning in any of the homes, so it was a bonus that the heat pump was for heating AND cooling. The HVAC company disabled the power to these when they used that breaker for the heat pump a year ago, so my husband was able to remove these finally now that we had an excuse to make a mess! Taking these 3 bulky metal heaters off will open up the room, and make it look more updated.

After sanding, we decided to stain. we chose a color called "espresso," but learned that you should not stain with a lambs wool applicator, (even when the lady at Lowe's INSISTS you use that) because it goes on too thick, no matter how much you try to stretch it thin. It sure looked pretty, but it was sticky, and even after 3 days it would not fully absorb or dry. This was frustrating for us, because removing that sticky layer meant adding MORE stain to the floor to "loosen" the sticky parts, and then wiping it all down again, essentially, starting over. These pictures are from the "sticky phase"

 We finally got all of the sticky stain off of the floor, after using and ruining ALL of my dish towels (but thanks honey for the whole new set of dish towels to make up for it!!) After that, the floor just felt really... damp? It's hard to describe. It wasn't sticky anymore, but it was not like normal wood. I ran my hand across it and felt a dust that reminded me of that kinetic sand that kids play with. Ewwwwwww.

Once again, we ventured to Home Depot, to rent the floor sander. I had to return an hour after starting for 36 grit paper, and lots of it. This time around, the sand pads were gunking up beyond belief! I cant believe what that sticky stain left on the floor. It took a LOT of time to get all of that off again, and by this time, I was starting to wonder why people like hardwoods over laminate.

I expected it, but we were left with a lot of stain still in the grain and crevices. The more I looked at that bare floor, and all of those lines and grain swirls, the more I loved the contrast. After all, they sell laminate floors that are made to look rustic, exactly like what I had in front of me. I decided to run with it. On the areas where there wasn't as much grain contrast, I used a Q-tip and stain to darken the grain. it looked completely natural and you can't even tell I had to do that. When we were satisfied with the grain contrast, we decided we would not be staining again, but just applying our polyurethane directly to it!


Polyurethane takes 2-3 coats, and gets sanded between each coat. This is a lot of work, but we jumped in.



Time for poly!

 The first coat went on without a hitch. it was drying nicely, and all was going well. The only hiccup we had was my 5 year old deciding to run across it at one point when it was mostly dry, it left only a small shoe print. The print sanded out perfectly when I was prepping for coat number 2. I used 220 grit, on a pole applicator rather than the big floor sander again. It was just easier for a light sanding.

Now the 2nd coat was where the magic happened!My color became so much more rich, and the floor was a perfect satin sheen. Polyurethane is not nearly as scary as stain, because it has binding agents in it designed to make it "dry" unlike stain, that is designed to only absorb. This meant thick coats were perfectly ok for this part of the process!

Now we just have to fill in the baseboards where the heaters were, paint the walls where the heaters were, repaint the baseboards white, and add the extra trim we bought for the baseboards. We are so close to done, but not there yet, so here are a few comparison pics, keeping in mind that we are not done yet.


It really is hard to believe that this is the same home it was a year and a half ago. And this is only ONE of the projects we have embarked on. <3

I will update when we finish :)