From Shabby to Shiny - Floor Refinishing

Those of you that have been reading this blog know that the floors really needed refinishing in our house.  The 112 year old red birch had taken a lot of abuse - covered up with vinyl in one room, brick in another and full of scratches, nicks and carpet staples.  In the kitchen, we had hoped to have birch under all the layers of flooring, but we discovered rough sawn pine boards......a big disappointment and required us to have new red birch installed.  So we were excited to finally be at a point in our project to do the floors!

The Living Room - Shiny!

The team from Abrams Hardwood Flooring showed up Monday morning and got to work.  They quickly started sanding and all the scars began to disappear.

The living room had a floor register cut into the floor - odd, because the house doesn't have hot air heat, so it was just a hole to the basement.  The guys removed some flooring from an upstairs closet and patched it in.  Can you find the patch in the photo???  It's invisible!!

The biggest challenge was the back bedroom.  It had been covered with vinyl tiles, which we had pulled up with the help of a heat gun.  It was a time consuming, nasty job.  And it left behind a black, tarry substance that didn't want to go away.  While they were sanding, the adhesive kept heating up -  and gunking up their sander, so they had to repeatedly take it apart and clean it out.  And even with all that work, Corey Abrams was still worried that they would get the adhesive off the top of the boards, but it would still be embedded deep in the grooves.  But thanks to all their hard work, that never happened and the results are amazing!  Take a look at the starting point and in progress pics.

Before - Vinyl Tiles over Birch Floor

Sticky, Black Tar-like Adhesive

It's not giving up without a fight!

Ready for finishing

Voila!!!  Beautiful shiny floor!

It took an entire week to sand all the floors in the house and apply 3 coats of polyurethane.  And what a transformation!  We are so pleased with how everything came out.  The floors have a rich, deep patina which highlights their age and really warms up the space!  Beautiful!!

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