The Pine Floor - Part Six

And we have lift-off!

The first coat of primer is down.  I did the cutting around the edges with a brush, and Eric rolled with a 5/8" nap roller.  As he rolled, I filled in some of the deeper gaps which he then later stepped in.  Oh well.  My intentions were good.  The whole job didn't take more than 1-1/2 hours, which was welcome, considering how long we took to remove the Varathane, and sand like mad-people.

We're happy with the effect.  It's an old floor, and the imperfections are still visible, yet it's a clean, solid surface.  It's what we were envisioning, and we're happy.

No, let me take that back.  We're ecstatic. 

We're not sure when we'll reapply the second coat.  Zinsser instructions say 45 minutes between re-coats, but we're waiting longer than that, considering the surface we're covering.  I'd hate to have the paint start to wrinkle or worse.  We've seen a couple of misadventures in wood finishing, so we're going to err on the side of caution and wait a day or two.  We'll see what the humidity is going to do as well. Zinsser says not to apply if the relative humidity is above 85%.  Today we're at 86%, and going up to 26C, which is going to feel hotter and more humid as the day wears on.

This product is really thin, yet extremely opaque with a good coverage.  I think I'll have this stuff under my fingernails for the balance of the week, it's that tough.

The Pine Floor - Part Cinq

So, here's what we learned today:

Sandblasting a pine floor is labour-intensive, back-breaking and, as an added bonus, sandy and dusty.

Sort of like everything we're doing these days, come to think of it.

But we discovered something new.  While sandblasting is messy, and the interior of our house now feels like a Scirocco wind blew through it, it was effective, just slow.  The nozzle we have is a 1"diameter, and it would have taken forever to do the entire room, so we did a small area, and put on our thinking caps.

(In the meantime, I was trying to figure out what I could sandblast, given we had the compressor out and everything set-up.  I came up empty - sad really - because often I come across things and wonder, hmmm, wonder if I could sand-blast that?  Owning a big-ass compressor just so I can sand-blast stuff at my leisure is one of my dreams).

Again, I digress.  Back to the floor:

When we combined the sandblast grit with our 40- and 50-grit sanders, (I got the sissy Fein, Eric got the hefty Porter-Cable 1/2 sheet), we were able to sand the floor without having the sandpaper clog incessantly.  That was our epiphany.  More good news is that the sandblast grit added the abrasion we needed to remove the sticky Varathane residue much quicker.  And even more good news:  the paint on the area where we did our scratch test is even harder now.  This means that hopefully tomorrow, after we go over the floor one more time with the "house" vacuum (as opposed to the shop vac), and neurotically go over everything one final time with a microfibre cloth, Eric can put down the first of three coats of primer.

Obviously, using sandblast grit means we're both wearing full-face masks, as well as our hearing protectors.  It felt funny to have the full-face mask on again.  It's been a few months since I wore it, and I didn't miss it one bit.  At the end of the day, taking off the hearing protectors and mask felt so good.

I'm thrilled with today's events.  I'll be even more thrilled when the first coat of paint is down.

Some "During" Photos

Looking at the "before and after" photos, nostalgia has struck, so I have to throw in a few "during" photos, just to give you a bit of the "OMG-what-the-hell-are-we-doing?" vibe that shows how we got from point A to point B.  I'm even super-sizing the photos, just because I can.

 This is how things looked when Eric gutted the downstairs. 

Here we are early on, during the phase of our lives we've come to know as "The Knotty Pine Purge".  We're not quite out of those woods yet.  No more knotty pine to tear down, but finishing work?  Oh yes!  Lots of finishing work remains to be done.  The house is toasty warm though.  That helps.

See the tar paper?  Well, the siding of our house is right behind it.  And no, the hole wasn't small.

Eric's gone rogue with the reciprocating saw, cleaning up the rotten boards so he can repair them.  What you're looking at is the structure of our house, not just some paneling.

Ah, yes.  One of my many contributions.  Many fond hours spent working in this corner.  Eric was busy rebuilding in one corner, and yours truly was busy in another, tearing down moldy drywall, tar paper, and finding one load-bearing beam that had turned to sawdust. It was a new low for us.

Upstairs after all divisions had been torn down.  Note the furniture we're (regretfully) working around, notice the plumbing that we've tripped over endless times, and the 5 gallon pail that held the nails we'd pulled out of the wood during the renovations.  Said and done, that bucket weighed about 100 pounds by the time it went to the metal recyclers.

Are we ready for the insane asylum yet?  Are the men with "I-love-me" jackets walking up the drive?  If this doesn't strike fear in the most hard-core renovator's heart, I don't know what will.

That we lived like this for months on end is unbelievable to me.  Everything is rebuilt, insulated, and even though the final finishing isn't quite done yet upstairs, it's nice to know we'll never have to deal with dirt, dust and debris the likes of the above again.

More than one person came upstairs during the "purge" and declared we're living something worthy of a reality-TV show.  So, there you have it folks: an intimate, behind-the-scenes look, the stuff they don't show you on TV, Shim Farm-style.

And then there was...paint.

Finally, the long-awaited day of painting the guest room finally dawned. If you remember correctly, Eric's parents were due to visit, and time was of the essence to finish the guest room before their arrival last May. But it was not to be. In the end, we offered up the master bedroom to his parents, while we slept in a Gyproc-clad room. Look on the bright side - at least we had a door.

With the background of this giclée print serving as inspiration, we wanted a colour that was not too yellow, and not too orange, not too bright, and not too light either. That narrowed things down to 12, 876 colours.

After much hemming and hawing, (I'm being PC: we were fighting and arguing), we chose a colour:

The walls are Gildden's "Ginger Peachy", a misnomer as the end result is neither ginger-y or peach-y, which was my greatest fear. I didn't want the quintessential pastel guestroom of horrors, but rather a warm, comforting ambiance by day or by night. The ceiling is Glidden's "A Touch of Nectar". (Who comes up with these names? And can I have their job?) These two colours are one beside the other on the Glidden palette, however, the two colours can't be more different. One has more ochre, the other more fuschia, yet somehow, they work harmoniously.

We have a fierce loyalty to Sico paint, so we decided to use Sico professional paint, and have them custom mix the Glidden colours. Erring on the side of caution, Eric went out and bought "A Touch of Nectar" first, and painted all walls and ceiling with this colour. The end result was too pale, and didn't really match the colour on the paint chip perfectly, so we took the darker shade just above it, "Ginger Peachy", and painted the four walls with this shade, leaving the ceiling in "A Touch of Nectar". The end result was just right.

Aesthetics aside, the most shocking part of all, here's the temperature four hours after lighting a fire in the wood stove located downstairs, after not having heated all day:

Unreal. 18.4C.

We went from this:

From -3 to 18 degrees without even really trying! (Well...trying to heat that is! We tried really, really hard with the rebuilding and insulation).

Well bowl me over...

The comfort level of the guest room is high. The floor's not quite finished, (let me get RIGHT ON THAT!), so we haven't moved any proper furniture into the space, but the room feels good. Comfortable insulated goodness all around.

Compare it to the uninsulated hell we were subjecting guests to before:

And it's a miracle guests actually come back to our house, isn't it?

In all fairness, the photo above was taken after we tore down the old pine bead-board - we weren't living in a complete hovel, it only looks that way.

Above, you can see the 2x6's Eric used to beef up the outside wall, and the 6" layer of Roxul insulation he placed between the studs. This is a west-facing orientation, and the kilometre of open field across the road (read: wicked winds!) meant this room was virtually inhabitable during the winter before our renovations. Turning on the baseboard meant heating the great outdoors, so we simply shut the two rooms on this side of the house when cold winds blew. (Which is what, realistically? Four months of the year?)

The rot above was found on the south side wall, essentially behind where the headboard of the bed meets the knee-wall. This rot was the worst we found, and the super-fine dust created by trimming the bad wood away permeated its way through the ENTIRE house. It was far worse than Gyproc dust, and I thought that was bad.

Now, we have straight, colourful walls. An inviting atmosphere, compared to the knotty pine purgatory of before.

The old pine floor had been shellac'd or varnished, I never did find out which. But it was I who dutifully got down on hands and knees for three days, and using a heat gun and putty knife, removed the entire finish. Now we (the Royal "We") are going to sand using 60 grit sandpaper, and paint the entire floor white. We might live to regret this decision (well, truth be told, I already do, since Eric's attitude about a white floor came down to this, and I quote: "You want a white floor? Well fine, YOU get a white floor...have fun doing it, because I won't").

Which leads me to another story, for another day.

Reno Day 69

I whipped out the calendar and counted from January 7th, the day we started to tear down the knotty pine purgatory, until today, March 16th. That puts us at 69 days into the reno from hell. We are progressing, however, it is never quick enough, and we are both starting to feel the drudgery of it all.

My hands looks like a construction workers' and I am tired. During this work, I have worn through a pair of leather gloves, have callouses on the TOPS of my feet where my work shoes bend, shredded 2 pairs of jeans, nearly electrocuted myself once, hit myself with a crowbar in the neck (don't ask for details), nearly taken off several fingers with a reciprocating saw, (again, don't ask), and have been generally in a perpetual funk, saying obtuse things like, "time to make the donuts" in reference to the Dunkin' Donuts ad, which if you recall, (how could you forget?), the employee was saturated by...making donuts. That pretty much sums up how I feel.

Eric is also tired and fed up. Living in a house during a major renovation takes patience, industrial doses, I might add. He wears an ice pack on his elbow held in place with an Ace bandage as a permanent measure because of the tendinitis in his elbow. He is currently on a 2 week vacation, which he refers to as his "construction holiday", or "another 2 weeks down the hole" depending on how bad things get. We both have so many splinters that we have learned to ignore them. We go to bed exhausted and sore, and wake up exhausted and sore. My right hand cramps up into a permanent I-want-to-hold-a-hammer-or-crowbar pose.

On the bright side, the upstairs isn't just warm. It is UNREAL just how toasty it is up there. Seriously, we went from -3 to about 22 degrees, and it's still cold outside. When the rooms are finally finished with Gyproc, I joke that we will be able to heat with a light bulb.

Today we moved the guest room bed from the former guest room to the new guest room. The room is far from finished, but we are having guests staying over this weekend, and we warned them they were staying in a rustic room, as in 2x4 rustic:

Since the photo below was taken, Eric finished the insulation and put up the vapour barrier. We didn't use Ayr-Foil this time, but found a tougher product that proved easier to install. We are calling the guest room the Disco Room because it looks a bit...retro...with the foil vapour barrier. All that's missing is the mirror ball in the middle of the room. (And because I lost my duel and Eric put up an outlet in the middle of the ceiling, it could be a possibility!)

The photo below shows the opposite end of the same wall; I pulled off the knotty pine, the vapour barrier, the Tentest, the vertical wooden boards, and this is what we are left with (once I clean!):

This wall is now ready for the studs and insulation, and then we'll have another full wall complete.

This is what the wall looked like behind the baseboard heater; the pine doesn't even go down to the floor. Craftsmanship? What craftsmanship? There was also varnish dripped all over the heaters from when the floors were done, and this has been bugging me for years. I am happy to see these baseboards go to the metal recyclers. Ecstatic, in fact.

I read an article recently that said you should move out of your house during a major renovation. Get real. The wusses can rent a hotel room, but I'm staying in the trenches, dust and all. Pass me the crowbar. I've got another wall to tear down.

Knotty Pine Purgatory

This is not a suspicion of mine. I have long since known that hell is paved not with good intentions, but with knotty pine. However, one proverbial quality of hell was absent on the morning of December 8th, and that would be heat:

Yes. That reads 45°F. That’s 8.5°C, but just as cold whether in F or C. And please note, this is not the great outdoors, but a room in our very own Knotty Pine Purgatory. This was a little experiment I conducted as the outside temperature plummeted to -20°C with a wind-chill prohibitively howling at around -29. (At those temps, you’re frost-bitten in about 20 minutes, Celsius or Fahrenheit, who cares, what matters is that you have multiple coatings of thermonuclear polar fleece on every square inch of your body.) To conduct this little experiment, however, all I needed to do was close the door to the guest room for the night and watch the temperature drop.

Well, it was 45°F in our guest room that morning, the much heralded and much loved room that all our guests comment on. It also proves my point, that if I had “too much wool” or “too many clothes” the room would have better insulation and wouldn’t be this cold, but once again, I am digressing.

It is glaringly obvious that we need to renovate our upstairs, and the day that we will start the tear-down is fast approaching. We have a deadline of next May to have the work completed, or we forfeit the rebate we will receive under the EcoEnergy Retrofit Program sponsored by our federal government. We pay enough taxes, so it would be nice if some of it actually went back into our pockets, and not out the window like our heat.

You see the vacuum-cleaner in the above photo? It NEVER gets put away - I think if it did, we'd suffocate on dog and cat hair. And the Rubbermaid bins? They are for my wool collection that is currently housed in the guest room and needs to be moved out at all costs. And the post made of 2 x 4's? It serves no purpose, and there are 2 of them. I can just picture the space we are going to gain when these come down!

Guests think our upstairs looks "so cozy", (I think they're being polite, after all cozy is just a euphemism for unbelievable mess)...they love the knotty-pine look (so do I, but I don’t want to live in it), and think it feels just like Grandma’s house. On some points, they are right. Knotty pine is nice when you’ve rented a ski chalet in Vermont, and it is cozy when it’s insulated, but there is exactly no insulation behind the pine whatsoever. That this house has been standing 150 years and no one has thought about this detail concerns me a bit. Although we replaced the windows with high-efficiency argon-filled thermal panes, the walls are bare: from the inside, we have knotty pine, some furring strips, and great spaces of nothing but space. Cold Space.

We aren’t exactly sure how long the knotty pine has been up, but one thing is for sure: whoever did the job was a “weekend warrior” when it came to home renovation.

In some places, the boards don’t even join, the doors have such major gaps, I can literally stick my hand under one door, and generally, just the fact there is no insulation warrants a major renovation.

So this winter, we are going to tear down all the pine, get right down to the outside exterior wall that is comprised of 1) horizontal pine (Eastern True Fir or Hemlock) , 3” thick by 12” high joined by tongue-and-groove, clad on the inside with 1½” thick vertical boards, some up to 14” wide. Due to water infiltration, years, mice and rot, some of these boards will have to be replaced, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Eric is going to put up 2”x6” studs and insulate with 6” Roxul Flexibatt (fireproof) to give us a R22 rating, the same as the insulation in the roof (after we removed the sawdust and re-insulated!) We will probably use the Ayr-Foil barrier again, because we are convinced that it makes a huge difference in heating and cooling based on its use downstairs, even if it is a bitch to install. (I am sure some of these R&D types have never held a hammer before, but again, I am digressing…)

Right now we are having trouble getting the insulation; it seems Roxul is behind in deliveries, and with the up-coming holiday and maintenance shutdowns, who knows when we will be able to get what we need. None of our home-renovation big-box stores that carry this product have it in stock, nor are they able to tell us if they even have some ordered. Bullsh!t is all I can say; I've been on both sides of that coin, and I know when to cry foul. We even wanted to PRE-PAY 40 bags' worth - that's a $1200 order - but no one seems to be capable of taking an order like that. Cash and carry is nice when the product is in stock...but really...40 bags is nearly a truck-load and no one can place an order? Wow. And have you ever tried to contact any one at Home Depot? Talk about the royal run-around. When you finally do get someone on the phone, don't expect any semblance of precise information, just be thankful you actually managed to get through to a live human being. Eric ended up going to the store with a friend's pick-up and trailer to get 10 bags that were "in stock" (ha ha), only to be told that, "Oops, we are so sorry, it seems we don't have any at all!". Gee, thanks for the heads-up! Grrrr...don't get me started. Seems no one wants to be accountable for anything, anymore.

So keep tuned. All I want is Gyproc, all over…then we’ll talk about paint, paneling and what-not. Some insulation, a sink and toilet, and of course, a bit more closet space.