06-18-2021, 10:25 AM
Wanted to close this one out.
MAN...that was a lot of work!
Some thoughts for anyone reading this in the future:
1 - SAND THE WHOLE HOUSE/FLOOR FIRST! When I read the suggestion to sand first...I did just that. However I just grabbed my 6" sander and sanded only the obvious areas. I discovered they really were bad so I just I cut out the bad wood and stitched in new/replacement. Everything was looking good until I rented the drum sander, got started, and was mortified. The flooring in the entire house was covered in urine stains. Every room/space had multiple stains ranging from 2x2 up to half of the room (literally like someone died and bled out there.) I wish I had paid the 40 bucks for 4 hours of sander rental from the very start and I would have said "sorry man, the floor is shot, plan on staining it extremely dark, painting it, or carpet." I wouldn't have invested the time and effort into repairing what I did. We ended up staining it medium and they just put rugs/plants/etc over the stained areas. But it was really depressing to have invested so much work into something that ended up being mostly covered up
2 - Never trust someone who says "we're going to tile the kitchen"....because they're likely wrong and will come back and ask you to install hardwood in it after you just spent the time cutting and installing all of the flooring in the dining room to the same length.
3 - Never trust anyone who says "don't worry about wasting the time to correctly stitch that area...it's just going to be covered by a cabinet"....because they're likely to be wrong.
4 - If you are wearing rubber gloves to apply stain and make the mistake of raising your hands and sweat pours out onto the raw wood floor. Quickly wiping it up will not be enough. Stop. Get out some sand paper as well and quickly/easily sand the areas back down. Otherwise as soon as you apply stain, that raised/different grain is going to make the drops obvious.
5 - If you're ever looking for a matte/"in the wood" sort of final finish. Loba Invisible Protect is an awesome product that went down easy and dried beautifully.
Thank you all your help/advice on this.
I didn't grab any shots of the floor after the final coat of Invisible Protect went down...but here ya go:
Replacement Wood Installed:
Dining room replace/repaired:
Whoops...now they want wood in the kitchen too (the far-side area that is not correctly stitched in is where the promised cabinet didn't end up covering)
Shot of the stained, but not finished floor:
In the end, they're extremely happy and appreciative of the floors....and that's really all that matters....but hopefully my mistakes/lessons will help someone down the road.
MAN...that was a lot of work!
Some thoughts for anyone reading this in the future:
1 - SAND THE WHOLE HOUSE/FLOOR FIRST! When I read the suggestion to sand first...I did just that. However I just grabbed my 6" sander and sanded only the obvious areas. I discovered they really were bad so I just I cut out the bad wood and stitched in new/replacement. Everything was looking good until I rented the drum sander, got started, and was mortified. The flooring in the entire house was covered in urine stains. Every room/space had multiple stains ranging from 2x2 up to half of the room (literally like someone died and bled out there.) I wish I had paid the 40 bucks for 4 hours of sander rental from the very start and I would have said "sorry man, the floor is shot, plan on staining it extremely dark, painting it, or carpet." I wouldn't have invested the time and effort into repairing what I did. We ended up staining it medium and they just put rugs/plants/etc over the stained areas. But it was really depressing to have invested so much work into something that ended up being mostly covered up
2 - Never trust someone who says "we're going to tile the kitchen"....because they're likely wrong and will come back and ask you to install hardwood in it after you just spent the time cutting and installing all of the flooring in the dining room to the same length.
3 - Never trust anyone who says "don't worry about wasting the time to correctly stitch that area...it's just going to be covered by a cabinet"....because they're likely to be wrong.
4 - If you are wearing rubber gloves to apply stain and make the mistake of raising your hands and sweat pours out onto the raw wood floor. Quickly wiping it up will not be enough. Stop. Get out some sand paper as well and quickly/easily sand the areas back down. Otherwise as soon as you apply stain, that raised/different grain is going to make the drops obvious.
5 - If you're ever looking for a matte/"in the wood" sort of final finish. Loba Invisible Protect is an awesome product that went down easy and dried beautifully.
Thank you all your help/advice on this.
I didn't grab any shots of the floor after the final coat of Invisible Protect went down...but here ya go:
Replacement Wood Installed:
Dining room replace/repaired:
Whoops...now they want wood in the kitchen too (the far-side area that is not correctly stitched in is where the promised cabinet didn't end up covering)
Shot of the stained, but not finished floor:
In the end, they're extremely happy and appreciative of the floors....and that's really all that matters....but hopefully my mistakes/lessons will help someone down the road.
