Kitchen - Before & Almost After

If I hadn't been there every step of the way, I doubt I would really accept that this is the same roomI have watched and helped create this transformation and still, I can hardly wrap my brain around the fact that this has actually come to pass. It just amazes me that this is the very same room, the very same house that we started out with last December.

We should get the floor finished in the next day or two. Then, while Vaughn is off hunting, I will be able to paint the stove and fridge were given so that we can use them while we save up to buy black ones. Hopefully, then we can move in shortly after he comes home.

Before we go on to the next step, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has helped. To those who spent hours in my attic connecting the wiring. To those who donned their painting gear and picked up a brush. To those who said, "You can do this," "That looks great," and "I'm so proud of you." To those who encouraged. To those who prayed. To all of our friends, especially the Adult II class and Wednesday Small Group from First Baptist, thank you all so very much!! We are so very very blessed to have friends like you! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!

Kitchen Floor - Stained!!

Staining floors is not a difficult process. I think the hardest part so far has been the orbital sander, that was not fun. Even the big drum sander wasn't as bad as that little mean thing.

If this is your first time to my blog, be sure to hit the "harwood floor" link in the label list on the left, you will get all the posts in this process to see how I got to this point. I had to take a break for a minute because my beloved was down in his back, but I'm back and my kitchen floor is stained and ready for lacquer!

All you need is you can of stain, clean floors, and a few rags. I use the cotton t-shirt rags from ACE. Dip one rag in the stain and don't ring it too much. Then you simply wipe it onto the floor.

Wood will only take as much stain as it will take. Wipe it on generously, then come behind with a dry rag and wipe the excess away. (The wood here was so dry that I had no need to wipe the excess. I simply wiped the stain onto the wood and went on.)

This floor has come a very long way from that ugly green speckled laminate that we started with and I am just as pleased as can be.

Was all the hard work worth it? All the steaming, scraping, sanding and staining? Look at this GORGEOUS floor...it has been most definately worth it.

Next step: polyurethane. I will not be doing this step. I have a seizure disorder and my darling husband is worried about me inhaling all the fumes. He will be doing the poly and I will post pics as soon as I can!!



P.S. Sorry about the delay, the next edition of Homemade Christmas, including candle winners will be posted tomorrow!!

Kitchen Floor - Getting There

Okay, so last night I sanded the outside of the room, puttied the blemishes and cleaned up a little. I thought I would go back and do some before and almost after's with you today.

Here is what the kitchen looked like before we started

And here is a better view of that floor that it had when we started. The pictures I had in that previous post had that red stuff on it. We still aren't sure what that was. Someone had spilled something on that part of the floor or something. You can see it on the floor in that first before picture.

Here's a few pictures that I took last night

As you can tell in the picture above, we removed the door on the right. The bedroom did not have a closet so we removed that pantry door and opened it to the bedroom. That wasn't a big deal, since they built me that wonderful floor to ceiling pantry on the left.

The dark marks on the floor are just still damp from where I mopped. Also, the cabinets and pantry do have doors, I promise, and we have drawers as well, they're just not installed yet.

My little kitchen is really coming along. By this time next week, I should have a table and chairs in there! Getting closer all the time!

Thanks for going through this process with me. Hopefully, someone has gotten an idea or two, maybe I've even been able to help someone decide whether or not to save their old hardwood floors.

If I can pray for you, please let me know.

Remove Laminate & Cutback From Hardwood - Done

If you remember from my first post about the floor in the kitchen, it started out as ugly, green, old, speckled laminate

Now it looks like this

I will post as each step of the refinishing process is done. By the time we get done, you will understand why the work of scraping the laminate off was worth it. If you have questions of how I removed the cutback, click the link at the beginning of this post to go back to the original post. If you try my method, please let me know how it worked for you by commenting on either post or sending an email.

Kitchen Floor - Almost Done!!

Okay, I would love to find the person who laid this laminate floor 50 years ago or whatever and smear bubblegum in their hair. Not really, there's nothing worse than bubblegum in your hair, except maybe cutback adhesive.

So here are a couple of pictures from last night

I'm almost done!! I am actually farther along now than I was when I took the pictures.

If I say I've been working on this for two weeks, then it seems hardly worth it. But seriously, I've only been working on it a few hours a night for two weeks. I figure it should take me about 3 hours to finish tonight and when I do, that will total about 24 hours total work time on that. That's nearly 300 sq foot of floor though.

If you have cutback laminate you would like to get rid of and save the wood flooring underneath, this is work, not hard work, but tedious work. But to me, oh, so worth it! I mean just look at that wood!!! Plus, I only spent maybe $150 on the rental, compared to the $500 (at least) that I would have had to spend on new flooring.

I will take pictures of the floor when I'm done scraping it. Then I will take pictures of the refinishing process if I can. You can do this, seriously, if I can do this, anyone can. Save the money, save the wood, its so beautiful!!

If you have any questions, I will try to answer them. If you try this, please leave me some comments!!!

Remove Laminate & Cutback From Hardwood

The house that we're fixing up has beautiful hardwood floors! The only bad thing is that the kitchen has 40-50 year old UGLY green laminate on top of the wood and it was stuck on there with cutback adhesive. How do I save the wood??? That was my question. If you've seen the pictures of the finished hardwood in the other rooms, you understand. The floors are amazing!

I searched and searched the internet, talked to flooring people and got a few hints. We tried a heat gun, didn't work. Tried Sentinel adhesive remover, that was ok, but you have to scrape off the laminate first. Flat out scraping was all we could find, and that was not fun, we did a small section, about 3"x10" in 45 min.

Then I heard that you could use an iron and wet towel to steam the stuff loose. So I tried it, it worked...kinda. So I thought, "What about a steamer?"

I rented a wallpaper steamer from our local hardware store for $30 a day and check this out it came off a whole lot easier. Don't get me wrong, its not EASY, its work, but if you want to save your floors, you have to decide if its worth it and to me, this isn't so bad. You have to work at it, but I wasn't even sweating, so it can't be that bad, right?

You just set the steamer on one section for a few minutes, then you move it a little bit and scrape where it was just sitting and it all comes off. You need a towel because the water mixes with the cutback and leaves some gummy residue that you have to wipe off, but hey, you get your wood back
One worry with cutback is that it may or may not contain asbestos. The great thing about this method is that the cutback is wet, so it doesn't become airborne, so you're not breathing it in. There are no chemicals either, like with the adhesive remover, so its a whole lot safer too!

I'll post pics of the finished floor soon!!


UPDATE 10/7/09: This floor is actually almost finished now!! YAY! So if you want to see the whole process from start to finish, just click the "Hardwood Floor" link either right here or under labels on the left and you can see every step of the way. Polyurethane next!!