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At the beginning of every year my husband and I make a project list of things we want to get done. Installing hardwood floors on our first floor was at the top of the to do list. Hardwood floors are finally DONE! At least most of the first floor!
This summer it seemed like we were always having things to do whether it was picnics, birthday parties or sport activities! Anyways, we did not get to the far back room of the house, which is like the hodge podge room. That extra room that is always good to have when it comes to space, but could serve as an as needed area. It has been a second living room, a storage room and a play room within the last three years of living in our farmhouse. I am actually relieved that we did not install hardwoods in this room because where in the heck would we put all our stuff!
Yes, we put as much as we could in our upstairs, but the only other place to put our stuff would be our barn. Our basement is dirt floors, not waterproofed, unfinished and well looks like a scary, haunted house. It’s an 1850s house basement! What else would you expect! And I definitely did not want to have to get a storage unit.
Our plans are to get that far back room done next spring and summer. Awww! Already starting my to do list for next year! SPOIL ALERT! The hodge podge room will eventually be the master bedroom. Super excited to share with you all my plans I have for that room!
It has been a long time coming to get these floors done. We actually got the wood more than a year ago from Barberton Tree, a customer of my husband’s company. They use to mill wood and send them to Amish country. They stopped doing that part of the business and wanted to get rid of piles of wood boards. We ended up paying only $500 for a pile of one inch thick red oak boards. Enough to cover at least 1,000 square feet of flooring. We also snagged a pile of a mixture of one inch boards made up of soft maple, birch and ash, which we used to shiplap our living room with.
The Process
Hardwood floors are very labor intensive. These were no engineered wood boards with tongue and groove already on them. These were solid red oak one inch boards. First thing first we had to tongue and groove both sides of all boards. We had to either go somewhere and get them done or do it ourselves. My husband is always up for a challenge and is pretty good at renovation projects. We also always look intothe cost of doing it ourselves or hiring someone. It is almost always cheaper to do things yourself. Just assume it will talke up a lot of your time. We made a custom router table. It took a little over a month of doing 30 boards a day to tongue and groove at least the amount of boards to do most of the main living area. (We still have to tongue and groove the other side of the boards for the hodge podge/ soon to be master bedroom.)
Ripping out all the flooring in the main living area went somewhat smooth, except pulling out the staples from the carpeting was not fun.
Next we had to level the floors. Many basement posts later and sanding and chiseling away at some cement on the floors, we got them pretty leveled. We were lucky we didn’t have to completely rip out the floors and lay new floor joists.
Next was to cut the floor boards and lay them. We had to cut off the ends and cut them different sizes to make them straight. After all the floors were layed we had to sand, fill the cracks, then sand again. I recommend to rent a heavy duty floor sander from your local hardware store.
Sanding took at least four days because the filling made with glue and sawdust is very difficult to get off the boards. This part can be frustrating and labor intensive. We have never done this before but filling the cracks was recommended so dirt won’t fill the cracks in floors overtime. It would be difficult to clean.
Advice: don’t wipe the glue sawdust mixture over the floors. Try your best to only get in the cracks. My husband wiped the filling on like tile grout. The problem is that glue is not like a mud or sand that can be wiped off with a rag and water. It is sticky and wood glue is meant to stay on. So try to stay only in the cracks or as little on the floor boards as possible. We tried our best to get the glue off as much as we could. A hand sander helps near the end to get those random boards with glue still on them. I wish we could have been more careful in this step or got more glue off. In some parts of our floors it might look blotchy or dark in some spots on different boards. That of course was the filling not fully removed. I just have to deal with it, but it kind of adds more character and charm. Just the kinks of hardwood floors. They are not perfect like engineered flooring.
Choosing the Stain
