primitives discuss refinishing wooden floors with elbow grease

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=287x9165

Oh my.

amerikat (1000+ posts)        Mon May-09-11 09:38 PM
Original message
 
How did they refinish wood floors before power tools?

It's hard work and time consuming even with the latest power tools.

Warpy  (1000+ posts)        Wed May-11-11 07:31 PM
Response to Original message
 
1. Refinish?

Most of those old floors were polished by hard use, at least up in New England. They were planed as splinter free as possible and installed. The ones in the fancier places were sealed with either boiled linseed oil or varnish. Poor folks used them as is unless they could afford paint, and then they painted them.

Refinishing consisted of filling in deep gouges and reapplying the finish.

A lot of the old places I've lived in had patterned hardwood or thin hardwood planking in the parlor areas. The rest of the house had wide softwood boards. The kitchen was subjected to especially hard use and that's the first place that saw paint and then later linoleum. While they might have taken reasonable care of the parlor floor (hiding it under rugs, using the room only for formal occasions), the rest of the place never saw any sort of refinishing as we know it.

Wash. state Desk Jet  (1000+ posts)      Sat May-14-11 01:33 PM
Response to Reply #1
 
2. Wooden ships and deck planks indeed

Interesting post Warpy !

franksolich is just messing around with campfires from Skins's island this morning, while he tries to devise a new way of observing and studying the primitives in a way the primitives don't know they're being watched and evaluated, for anthropological illumination; nothing's come to mind yet, not even a glimmer of a plan, but maybe over the next several days or weeks, something will.

[Karin]

I laugh at the real estate blurbs that brag about "original hardwood flooring!!!"   Yeah, my house has them too, and they're mainly all covered up with carpet.  Not beautiful, too creaky, cold, and noisy.  Made you feel like you were in a barn.  I've decided that "gleaming hardwood floors" is a romantic notion that I've disavowed myself from.  Although BEG's floors look really nice. 

[zeitgeist]

I laugh at the real estate blurbs that brag about "original hardwood flooring!!!"   Yeah, my house has them too, and they're mainly all covered up with carpet.  Not beautiful, too creaky, cold, and noisy.  Made you feel like you were in a barn.  I've decided that "gleaming hardwood floors" is a romantic notion that I've disavowed myself from.  Although BEG's floors look really nice. 

I am waiting on my floor guy now.  Want to see pictures of my latest uncovered wood?  Older house.  Floors covered by lino and carpet for years.  Fir in kitchen, upstairs bedrooms, other rooms solid oak. 

You would not believe what the floor looked like under the lino compared to what it looks like this AM.  Floor guy says they put down the fir then the lino so the fir is like brand new.  It looked pretty grim when the lino came up but now it is looking good.

Made an interesting discovery about "old school" installation of base boards.   They did not put them on top of the flooring but butted the flooring against the base boards.  ( Because of the scope of the work the baseboards had to be taken out). 

I will see if I can patch the pics from my other computer.  Sadly I didn't take any of the floor without the lino showing the what they looked like before the first sanding.

Opps that unit is currently off line.

[BEG]

I laugh at the real estate blurbs that brag about "original hardwood flooring!!!"   Yeah, my house has them too, and they're mainly all covered up with carpet.  Not beautiful, too creaky, cold, and noisy.  Made you feel like you were in a barn.  I've decided that "gleaming hardwood floors" is a romantic notion that I've disavowed myself from.  Although BEG's floors look really nice.  

The floors in our current house have been refinished at least a couple of times. In general the look terrific for wood floors that are from the 40's but there is an area by the back door and by the windows around the dinning room table that need refinishing. if we were to stay here I would have had them refinished (you cant spot refinish, which sucks).

Our neighbor across the street has old wide wood plank floors.  They are perfectly imperfect. With nail holes from previous carpet that was put down then taken back up. I love the look of them.

[BEG]

I am waiting on my floor guy now.  Want to see pictures of my latest uncovered wood?  Older house.  Floors covered by lino and carpet for years.  Fir in kitchen, upstairs bedrooms, other rooms solid oak. 

You would not believe what the floor looked like under the lino compared to what it looks like this AM.  Floor guy says they put down the fir then the lino so the fir is like brand new.  It looked pretty grim when the lino came up but now it is looking good.

Made an interesting discovery about "old school" installation of base boards.   They did not put them on top of the flooring but butted the flooring against the base boards.  ( Because of the scope of the work the baseboards had to be taken out). 

I will see if I can patch the pics from my other computer.  Sadly I didn't take any of the floor without the lino showing the what they looked like before the first sanding.

Opps that unit is currently off line.

I would love to see pictures.

[zeitgeist]

The floors in our current house have been refinished at least a couple of times. In general the look terrific for wood floors that are from the 40's but there is an area by the back door and by the windows around the dinning room table that need refinishing. if we were to stay here I would have had them refinished (you cant spot refinish, which sucks).

Our neighbor across the street has old wide wood plank floors.  They are perfectly imperfect. With nail holes from previous carpet that was put down then taken back up. I love the look of them.

If this works right this shows the dining room oak and the kitchen fir freshly sanded before but before poly.

opps have to dumb it down to attach......(650 kb limit on attach) wait one.

[zeitgeist]

I dumbed it down a bit. It was about 950KB now it's 59KB