We are currently in a sawdust nightmare, fine sawdust is even in my ears.
When we bought our house the floors were covered in a green sculpted shag-like carpet. We peered into the coat closet and saw the oak floors and knew then that we’d be tearing that carpet out and refinishing the floors. That was so many years ago. I started on it once. I tore the carpet out and did some tests to see what finish was on the floor. As with most of the really old houses the finish was shellac.
After pulling up the rugs and pulling out the carpet tack strips, I used straight ammonia to scrub the floor. The floor had the rug’s foam backing embedded into the shellac from so many years of wear. The ammonia did dissolve a lot of the shellac but not all of it. I then went over it with denatured alcohol and rolls and rolls of paper towels trying to get the rest off. My nose still can’t smell much since that time and I’m sure I lost a few brain cells.
There were still stubborn spots so I used a safe stripper on it to get some more off. I really didn’t want to sand the floor. I didn’t want to lose the natural appearance of almost 100 years of wear and tear but I needed to get the foam backing of the rug off the boards. Years have passed and the floors never got done. We bought area rugs and most of the floor were covered up but not all and it finally drove me nuts. I had a change of heart and wanted to rent a sander.
We went to Lowes and rented the sander and came home with a fist full of sandpaper circles to go on the sander. Let the nightmare begin. Let the sawdust fly. As one blog said after renting the Lowes sander and telling of his experience, he said, “enjoy!” I wondered what he meant by that. So now I know. I’ve been back to Lowe’s 3 times already to buy more packs of sandpaper circles. Apparently, I didn’t get as much shellac off in the past years as I had thought. The sander was suppose to be back by 9 PM tonight. It didn’t happen as it is now past midnight and I still have 2/3 of the second room to finish. I took some video of the sanding process. I’ll post it when we finally finish the sanding. I’m sure I’ll look back and laugh at the thought that we had planned to rent the sander, sand the 2 rooms, go visit my in-laws and go out for our anniversary dinner of surf and turf all in the same day. I still have my surf and turf anniversary dinner coming as well as the visit to my in-laws.
Tags: lowes, sander, white oak floors