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.

The Pine Floor - Part Quatre

Things are really coming together in Eric's office:

I really wish that photo wasn't distorted - the knee wall is perfectly straight, but doesn't photograph that way.  Trust me when I say -  it's straight.

The electrical outlet under the window is for the radiant heater we're putting in this room.  It's the Flex model from Calorigen.  Since this room is in the north-west corner of the house and although everything is rebuilt and reinsulated, we're not messing around.  I'll give a full, sordid review later, since we already installed an 800W Flex heater in the guest room last winter.  It doesn't make winter any shorter, but it sure ups the comfort of the house.

Eric used his little hand-held Dewalt circular saw to straighten out the long gouge in the floor, and cut a 1" x 1" square plug to fit the length of the hole.  Everything's epoxied into place, and sanded down:

Here's an up-close beauty shot:

That's about as fixed as things can get, without ripping out the floor boards (and idea we did entertain today, though).  But more on that below...

With regards to the spaces between the boards, we've decided to paint a few of them with copious amounts of paint and evaluate the look when the paint has dried.  Then, we'll decide if we're able to live with the end result or not.  If we hate the appearance, well, then we'll remove the crud with the Fein Multimaster tool, and go from there.  Truth be told, if anyone dares to get down on hands and knees and inspect the gaps between the boards once the floor's painted, all they're gonna get out of it is a swift kick in the ass.

I should have given myself a swift kick in the ass for even having taken this photo:

5/16" of crud, bay-bee!  We're both (officially - yeah!) sick and tired of spending another moment on our hands and knees in this room.  To hell with integrity.  We're gonna paint over it and move on.

But Houston, we have a problem:

After much reading, we decided to use Zinsser BIN primer as a base coat.  It stuck like misery to the world to the knots, as well as the epoxy repairs.  But on the original floor itself, it scratches off easily.  We're not going to top-coat this three times only to have the primer not adhere properly, so we're at an impasse until we find a solution.

 

I have to mention that this scratch test was done mere hours after application, so I think Eric's really jumping the gun with his worrying.  24 hours later, it was much, much more resistant.   Eric's still skeptical though, but I maintain he's worried about nothing.

The Zinsser BIN is really thin and splatters when applied with a 5/8" nap roller, hence we used blue paper we bought from the auto body-shop down the street to protect the paint job.  Thinking outside of the box is our specialty - plus we didn't feel like driving to Home Depot for such a trivial item.

Eric did some more research after his "failed" scratch test and concluded that our original floor finish is probably Flecto Varathane.  This would mean sanding off every little bit (did you hear me?:  EVERY.LITTLE.BIT.) of remaining residue, and while this room only measures 10' x 12', we will eventually have the entire upstairs to do.  We also need to take into consideration that the floor has already been sanded down once, and that about a 1/4" was taken off at that time.  This is important because our floor is structural, so taking off any more wood with a commercial sander really isn't an option.

Right now, things are looking like Eric's going to take the floor to task with the belt sander again, much to his chagrin and dismay.  But that option sounds better than his earlier idea of overlaying the entire floor with tamarack (our wood-pusher had a deal...), or even worse, ripping out the entire floor and starting fresh.

Of course, these ideas come to Eric like little flashes of lightning, and then promptly get relayed to me at work by telephone, when I'm helpless to grab him by the shoulders, shake him hard, and say, "Get a grip, man!"

But first, we've had another collective "a-ha" moment, so...cue the sand blaster and stay tuned for part five.