Main Floor Renovation

We are in full motion on the renovation of the main floor with our main goal to be moved into the living room in the next few weeks.  

Flooring

As with the upstairs, we entirely refinished the floors on the main level.  This floor consists of a combination of oak around the exterior of the rooms with heart pine in the middle of the rooms (the same pine that is upstairs).  Originally, the pine floor had been painted some kind of purple color.  Yea, so, the paint was a pain in the ass to get out.  Stripper, to my surprise, didn't work that well on it and I had to resort to some extremely rough sandpaper to get through it (20 grit).

 

The oak part of the floor had an old varnish on it that wasn't too difficult to remove and reacted well to the stripper to remove the most of it.  Here are some pictures after the sanding was complete.

We used the same Waterlox finish that we used on the upstairs.  It is really easy to use and with the satin finish, it doesn't overpower the room and keeps the "in the wood" look.  Four coats of Waterlox later, the floors are complete.

 Staining and Trim
On the entire main floor, there is a quite a lot of wood trim (windows, doors, floor, etc.) that are substantial and were not in very good shape.  Previous owners had applied some sort of paint/stain to a lot of the trim that just looked awful.  We began with the windows to sand them down as much as we need to remove the old finish and clean up blemishes.  We then applied a stain on top of that to bring a consistent color all around.  Once the stain had dried, we applied a wipe-on type polyurethane to provide some protection as well as bring a satin sheen.

Stairway
Other than the trim, the one really large area left was the stairway.  They really weren't too bad, but a refinishing would really breathe life back into them.  The problem with refinishing stairs is that there are so many corners to sand into and add on top of that a 90 year old finish.  We ended up stripping the stairs as well and then tediously sanding each step to prepare for staining.  We decided to stain the steps the same color as the rest of the trim on the main floor.  My wife did all the staining and I kept referring to it as her masterpiece as it was just really painstaking work.  She did a great job!  The steps now have a more consistent color to them and they don't feel so rough.  We will be putting a finish on these in the coming days.

That's it for this post.  Next up is getting a finish on everything and install the shoe molding throughout the main floor.  I also have to make some cold air return covers for the dining and living room.