My DIY Finished Floors - Part 1 - Can you sand your floors with a hand sander?
I am ultimately geared up to proportion my DIY completed flooring with you!!
Truthfully, my floors have been finished for a while now but I've been procrastinating writing this blog post because I knew it would be a super long one. I’ve taken tons of pictures and I have a lot of information to share and so that is why I just decided to break this post up into 3 parts. Today in Part 1 I wanted to share more of the story behind painting my floors and then I’ll be back soon for a Part 2 where I’ll share a How-To and then finish with a Part 3 and share pictures of how the room now looks with the newly finished floors plus a new paint color on the walls as well as a few other changes.
So above is a photograph of what our wood floors seemed like before.
I trust these wooden floors are authentic to our 1924 home and as you may see within the above image there has been a few patchwork achieved at some time. We're wondering perhaps there was as soon as an addition introduced to our home in which they prolonged the sunroom out more than one greater ft.
If only walls floors could speak, right? :)
These wood floors are all throughout the primary dwelling regions of our home, and I agree with that they're Oak or perhaps Pine, but I truly don't know my wooden that well to tell you for positive.
Looking returned, it'd have been exceptional to have refinished the floors prior to us transferring in seven years in the past, but it wasn't that an awful lot of a priority to me on the time. I was just honestly happy to have timber flooring after residing in a domestic with just carpet.
It without a doubt wasn't until the day that my husband told me that he sincerely did not like our flooring due to the fact they have been so orange. He stated that they reminded him of a health club ground.
LOL
Well after he said that then that became all that I may want to see too, Orange Gym Floors!
And so I made it my task to alternate that.
Being a accessible DIY gal I wanted to see if I could sand the floors with my lovely little mouse sander and then positioned down a few sparkling new stain.
My plan become to begin in a nook of our sunroom, paintings in small sections and see how it goes.
When I shared a picture on social media approximately what I become as much as, I changed into surprised on the mixed comments I acquired. Some humans had been very curious about how this project became going to turn out because they too would really like a good way to makeover their very own floors, but then some other people were somehow dissatisfied that I become going to strive this assignment myself announcing that I had to "leave it to the professionals" and that I wished a "bigger sander" and I even got an "unfollow".
So here's the truth.
I wasn't capable of sand all the manner down to the raw wood with my little mouse sander. However, I become able to sand off all of the heavy layers of the brilliant protecting finishing sealer, leaving me with a few manageable previous stained flooring. So I just added a few new stain proper on pinnacle of the old.
I went with the darkest stain I could find which was called Jacobean by Minwax. I brushed it on, let it sit for about 10 minutes and then wiped the stain off with a rag.
Once the stain was dried, I added a few coats of floor sealer and I was pretty pleased with the way it was all coming together. But then when it was time to move some furniture around.... the furniture scratched the floors!
Now those scratches might have been precipitated for some extraordinary reasons. I may have needed to wait longer for the flooring to remedy before shifting fixtures around. I may additionally have had to add more layers of sealer. My furnishings didn't have any ft protectors on them and so it is able to have been scratching the flooring all alongside besides however I just failed to be aware. Or it may have scratched due to the fact I did not get the flooring sanded to the uncooked wood previous to staining them. Truthfully, I nonetheless do now not recognise why they scratched.
I ended up sanding off the top layer of sealer I had applied and then I added even more coats of stain leaving the floors nearly black. I sealed it and then let it all sit untouched for plenty of time to cure.
In the end I actually really liked the way that the floors looked. I wish I had a picture of my nearly black stained floors because they looked pretty and they were actually holding up just fine, So I was then ready to move on to do the other side of the room.
But at this time, I went searching in our garage for a bigger sander. Yes, All along, this whole time, there was a belt sander in our garage. I was just a little scared to use it because it seemed so heavy-duty :) Also I really wanted to see if I could sand the floors with my mouse sander to prove to you all that it could be done....so to report, I'm sorry, I still don't know for sure if the finale results of using a hand or mouse sander could be enough to get the job done. I mean, I think so, but I just can't say how it would have held up over time.
So Anyway...
Lesson found out due to the fact as soon as I figured out that the big heavy-responsibility belt sander hiding in our garage in reality wasn't even frightening at all to use, and it labored surely nicely, in truth, it labored so correct that I became capable of strip the flooring down to the uncooked wood truly brief and effortlessly.
So now that I had some beautiful raw wooden flooring I had a brand new decision to make. What shade of stain ought to I try this time?
Now with the other side of the room still being the dark color, I soon realized that dark floors would be high maintenance. Just like owning a black car, dark floors show all the dirt.
I was also really loving the look of the lighter floors. At first I tried just adding a sealer to the raw wood floors but it still came out looking a bit orange. I also tried out some different paint colors mixed with water to create a white-wash and I tried out some other stain colors as well and so I really gave myself a lot of different options to pick from.
Here is a photograph I took to Instagram asking my reader what they preferred quality.
Majority of my fans stated that they appreciated the Walnut stain best.
But my heart turned into announcing to go together with paint.
I am clearly no longer that acquainted with stain and I find it to be pretty difficult to work with, whereas I love my Paint. I'm very familiar with paint and so I figured the best option could be to stick to what I realize exceptional. Paint!
After trying out different colors of paint mixed with water, like a white-wash using white paint and a grey-wash using a grey paint, what I ended up loving the most was a beige-wash that I created with mixing a beige-colored paint with water.
The reason for mixing the paint with water is that it is going on very gently allowing the grains of the timber and the strains of the forums to nonetheless show thru.
I held up a chunk of driftwood subsequent to the newly painted floor and I discovered it turned into almost a great healthy. This completely made my day due to the fact I love that seashore-house appearance. :)
Most of the time when you buy a "driftwood" stain it turns out really grey and it sometimes will have purple undertones in it, so even if you arn't looking to stain your floors, this beige-wash could be used on any other wood projects that you may be working on to achieve a real driftwood look.
Once I was perfectly glad with the shade, I introduced more than one coats of sealer to the top.
But don't forget, this become just 1/2 of the room, I then needed to re-sand off all of the darkish stain that become nonetheless on the opposite aspect of the room.
It turned into numerous work and Very Very Dusty and Dirty!
As you may see, this was an needless lengthy system of completing my flooring. Had I known what sander, sandpaper, paint, and sealer to use within the first region then this undertaking would were completed all the time in the past.
But that's why I'm sharing this whole method with you. So that you may learn from my absolutely awful and my really exquisite alternatives.
LoL
So stick round for Part 2 in which I display you Step by way of Step How I did all of it. I'll additionally be sharing all of the distinct products I used as properly.
All in All, Now that I'm finished, I'm SO Happy with the outcomes and my husband is SO Happy that the Orange Gym Floor is long past......Well at least inside the Sunroom..... For now.
Because I'm now transferring directly to do the rest of the residence.
Yup! Because I'm kinda a seasoned now.
:)
So what do you all suppose?
Are you stimulated or are you going to Unfollow me?
Ha!
Thanks for preventing by way of,
Emily