Not so Wordless Wednesday

So I like the idea of Wordless Wednesday; you know letting the pictures do the talking. But by golly I've finished my floor and I really want to say a few words about it. First off, I love it!
The pictures here are of the stairs down from the Master Suite, (at least that's what the builder calls it.) and then down into the foyer and front room. It shows the staircase that absolutely kicked my butt, but which came out looking spectacular if I do say so myself.
After a lot of of deliberating and homework looking into the various finishes that were available, and what costs would be for those, we decided to go with Olympic Brand water based semi-gloss polyurethane (poly).I ran a couple of test using the Tried and True product that was the one that we were leaning towards primarily because it was based on natural oils and waxes. The other products may have been as effective as the poly, but just weren't cost effective for our budget.
As I was saying, I did a couple of tests with the Tried and True, and while I will say that it left a very warm and soft finish that I loved, it didn't provide the type of protection that we need with three boys and a dog. We had a section of wood flooring that was in front of our back door from the original flooring install; I sanded it, and applied a coating of the T-n-T over the whole area. Part of this I also covered with two coats of a flooring wax. I left an ice cube out over night on both sections (a common occurrence and annoyance in our kitchen.) and checked on it the next day. The unwaxed area had basically absorbed the water, swollen/warped, and was stained; very unsatisfactory. The waxed area did do better, and seemed to be repelling some of the water, but did stain, and have some warping. I tested clean up of the two areas, and although it was possible, and were it only my wife and I, we may have gone with it. As it is, we found that the Olympic product was very low in VOC's, dried quickly and provided a good seal. Add to this the fact that we could buy two gallons of it for the price of one of the other and the decision was made. We put four coats on the main floor areas, and three coats on the upstairs bedroom areas.

The whole process to this point has taken about a month and a half, we've spent the whole time in a semi state of chaos, and the last 5 days with no furniture in the house and every bit of it was worth it. I know there were a couple of you that mentioned that you were preparing to do some hardwood floor work; if there's any questions that you have for me on this, I'll do my best to try and help you with it.
P~

Spammers, Weather, Flooring, Football

Well, I guess I could take it as a compliment to my literary prowess; confirmation of the high degree of useful and informative topics I have so expertly handled that has drawn the spammers. But really, how could they not come. I really don't want to use the post validation that I know a lot of you fellow bloggers have moved to. Not to say that it bothers me to have to maneuver though them myself, but I just don't like them. So for the time being, if you see any funky comments in any of the sections of my site, please do me the favor of letting me know, or at the least ignore them till I have a chance to delete it. (Unless of course, you are looking for a new sea-side condo in Costa Rica?)


On the weather front - It's another weekend of rain here and snow in the mountains. Fall fell hard this year. It is the 6th of October and we've had snow in the mountains three times already, and once in the valley.

Flooring update - A~ and I spent the entire day sanding the floors today. I mean literally the whole day. We rented the sander at 9:30 am, and stopped for the night at 10:30 pm. It was a long day but I have to say that I am sooo happy with the way that it is coming along. I will post pics of the finished sanded flooring tomorrow. We will be doing the final prep work for the top finish tomorrow, and will be trying to get it finished up on Monday.

Chargers play the Broncos tomorrow. Go Bolts!!
P~

First Snow and Flooring update.

So I was out in the garage making a cut on a piece of board for the flooring; the garage door was open half way and I remember thinking "Hmm, if I didn't know better, I'd say it feels like snow's coming." Then I went inside and started putting the boards down. I told A~ what I thought and she said she didn't think so, but the news said they may get some on the benches (that's what they call the area at the base of the mountains.) It wasn't five minutes later that I looked out the back door and saw this. It doesn't look like much, but if you click on it you'll see it was definitely snow. Big fluffy, wet, snow. I was right.. Ha Ha! Anyway, I went out again during a break in the storm and covered the garden. I love this time of year. Growing up in California I didn't really get to experience the whole season changing thing and I love it. The weather cools, the leaves start to change and the world starts to slow down after a long fast summer. You know I never really got the whole lazy days of summer saying, it always seems that there's so many things to do.
Which brings me to the second half of this post; the floor. I'm almost there, this weekend we got the biggest room of the project finished, YESSS! Just three small steps, and on to the finishing. Speaking of which, I'm sad to say that I think we're going to go ahead and use the polyurethane after all. With our family, and our budget, it just seems to be the right product. I hope you've all had a great weekend, and I'll talk to you all again soon!

P~

In with the new

Well, so far so good! We spent the majority of last weekend working on finishing the front room and upstairs landing with the Red Oak flooring that we have. You can see the difference between the original kitchen entry on the left after we had ripped out the old carpeting and the new interlaced (that was a pain in the butt by the way) flooring on the right. I have to say that we had the flooring angels on our side during this weekends work. Although we did get a much later start than we had hoped too, somehow all of the corners and vents and walls seemed to land dead on in line with a plank seam. Had this not happened, I would have had to find some creative way of ripping the boards and lining them up correctly so that the rest of the floor wasn't crooked. Any way we made good progress, A~ and I haven't had a good home remodel project to work on since the recycled concrete work we did this spring and we always enjoy working together; this time was no different!
Here's another before and after. This is our front sitting room. Mainly it serves as a landing strip for our boys when they hurl themselves down the stairs which you might have noticed are not finnished yet. This will be my project for the next week or so. I fear that it will be slow going; I could by all of the finished bull-nose stair peices but at $40.00 per 5' piece, I think I'll be putting the old table saw to use thank you very much! I have been successfull in finishing off the entry ways to the bedrooms over the last couple of days, so I am not to worried about the stairs. Measure twice cut once right Dad? (It took a long time to learn that lesson I'll tell you!) Below is a picture of the finished bedroom entries. I have to say I'm pretty proud of the work I did, seeing as how I've never done it.

We still haven't decided on how we are going to ifnish the flooring. We are leaning towards the Tried and True product that I reviewed HERE, but we just aren't sure. It has to be durable, and waterproof, but we would like to avoid the polyurethanes if possible. Notice on the first before and after picture of the kitchen entry; the yellowing that can happen after just a couple of years. PolyUrethane is photo sensitive and will do that. Oil and wax penetrating sealants won't, or at least that is my understanding.

I was curious, it seemed there was a bit of interest in the wood flooring when I first posted it, is there any questions about the installation process that I can adress for any of you while they might be fresh in my mind. I know Phelan at Homesteading neophyte just did some nice wood flooring in her place, anyone else planning on it?

P~

SLC Green Building Center

Saturday we went down to Salt Lake city to go to "The Green Building Center" our local supply center for environmentally friendly and more natural building products. We came to look for alternatives to polyurethane finish for the hard wood flooring that we are preparing to put in.

In addition to replacing the carpeting in our home with hardwood flooring, we are painting all of the common areas. This is something that we had planned already, and since we are doing it primarily to improve the health of our living environment, we have taken time to research some alternative products to the standard ones available at Lowes/Home Depot.

The main product that I wanted to look into was OSMO's Polyx oil.

"Ingredients 50-60 % solids (High Solid) Base: natural vegetables oils and waxes (sunflower oil, soy- bean oil, thistle oil, - carnauba and candellila wax), paraffines. Additives: siccatives (drying agents) and water-repellent additives. Solvents: disaromatized white spirit (benzenefree - in compliance with purity demands of the European pharmacopoeia)."

This product from what I gather is sort of the cadillac of the natural penetrating sealers. It is a German product and passes the very rigorous German standards for water repelling and saliva fastness. (This last bit was an unusual one for me, but essentially it means that little ones drooling or biting on the product won't degrade it or harm the child. ) I like what I have read about the product but have a couple of issues. One is that it's a foreign product; I'd like to keep my dollars here if at all possible. The other is that it has a longer drying time. 18-24 hrs between coats, and is a little funky smelling. We will be living in the home while we area finishing the floors, this is one reason that we want to keep away from the high odor treatments also, and it will be hard to avoid our stair for 24 hours while it drys.

Another product that I was shown was one called "Tried and True".

"Tried & True Original Wood Finish is made from highly refined, highly Polymerized Linseed Oil and pure Beeswax. This product is 100% solids, and has no solvents or heavy metal driers. The recipe for this finish is adapted from a Shaker finish and an English Arts and Crafts technique."

This was the product that I came away likeing the most. I initally thought that it was not meant for wood flooring, after later looking into it further I found that their website had a complete separate section describing it's use and benefits as related to hardwood flooring. I liked this product for the simplicity of it's ingredients. Lindseed oil and beeswax. Also because one of the other things I have found was a recipe to make a DIY foor polish based on beeswax and I think they would be more compatible. It also takes about 24 hours to cure, but smells much more pleasant. This is also a USA product and is manufactured in NY. It covers about the same amount of space, but also costs considerably less ($59.00/gal compared to $94.00/2.5 L)

On another note. An added benefit to using this type of oil/wax sealants is that when the floor or even just the heavy traffic areas need refinishing, you don't need to strip and sand the entire floor to do it because otherwise the old and new wouldn't match. This type of finish allows you to merely burnish and clean the worn area, and apply locally a new coat of finish. Much less trouble and much less cost.

We also purchased our interior paint here; a product called American Pride.
This is a ZERO VOC paint. Yep, no chemical nasties here. Not low VOC. ZERO. We think we are going to be very happy with this product; not only is it much healthier (it has a slightly yeasty smell rather that the typical plastic bag smell of paint.) but we spot tested it when we got home to check the color and it covers very well. Oh yeah, and at $29.00/gal it's about the same or less than many conventional products out there.

I hope I've been able to give you a better idea of some options that are out there. I'll be doing some more research and possible calling some of the companies. When I know for sure I'll let you know and give a review of the performance.

The Green Building Center

Tried & True Wood Finishes

OSMO Polyx

American Pride zero VOC paint