An Update On Our Demolition Project

This weekend, Kevan and I decided to rent a belt sander so we could work on the wood floors in the master bedroom.  The belt sander cost about $42 a day (plus the cost of sandpaper), but since they are not open on Sundays we got a day for free. 

Once we made it home with the sander I realized we were a little early on the rental.  We still had a lot of the carpet still on the floor.

If you remember my earlier post when we pulled up the 2 sets of carpeting and pad there was padding leftover that was glued down.  We pulled up the rest of the carpet/padding and started working on the pad/glue.  We had to sit and scrape all of the black pad and glue from the floor before we could sand.  It is hard work.  Saturday night my arms felt like they were going to fall off.  One word...Ibuprofen!  :o)

While I scraped Kevan started using the sander.  You would think it was easy to use a sander, but it isn't.  It is hard on your arms.  Also, you don't push it...you pull it.  The harder it is to pull the better the sanding job.  Also, you CANNOT let it sit on a certain area or it will sand too much and create burn lines on the floor.  I know because I did it.  I learned quickly.

Here is what the floor looked like when we started the sanding.

After a few passes.  This will give you an idea of what it looks like.

A few more...

In the above picture you can tell that the middle is the most past area, followed by the bottom.  Then, the top is where we haven't passed at all.

After a few HUNDRED passes...here is what it looks like.

We only worked on it about 4 hours today since we had church this morning.  But, this is what the room looked like when we stopped tonight.

The sander is due back in the morning by 8am.  We were really discouraged when we stopped today.  We have been second guessing ourselves wondering if we are doing the right thing.  2 people that stopped by told us that we should just carpet over it.  I just feel bad carpeting over almost 100-year-old oak hardwood floors.  After writing this post though and reminding myself of where we started I feel a bit better.  I also looked online at the prices for flooring for a 14x15 foot room and it would be $900 (installed) for carpet and $1,000 for oak hardwood (installing ourselves).  After seeing the prices I feel a lot better too since we have only put out less than $100 so far.  We will need to do it at least one more weekend and then buy the polyurethane, but it will still only be about $300 for hardwood floors, plus the experience of having done it ourselves and the special-ness of having original flooring.

To give you an idea of how I feel after 2 days of scraping, sanding, vacuuming, sweeping and throwing the cats out of the room over and over again....I'm ready to go back to my day job tomorrow.  It requires no manual work whatsoever.  My back, arms, wrists don't ache from working at a computer all day.  I can sit in my PJ's until noon if I want to and just use my fingers to type.  I can't wait to sit on my bum and work at my laptop tomorrow.  :o)