My best DIY project ever

[notfarnow]

Context:
I have to admit that I spend a lot of time feeling a bit jealous around here. I get jealous seeing your cars in the tech forums. In OT, I often get jealous seeing your beautiful homes. Now, it's worth noting that I'm in a different place than I was 2 years ago... back then I was THIS CLOSE to buying a 911. Since then, Mrs Notfarnow has gone back to school full time, and I've started taking night classes to finish up my undergraduate degree. Basically, things are tight. On the upside, I'm 30, I have a great wife and I live in my dream house... a ~120 home with nary a straight line or a level board. Beautiful property in a great neighborhood. Basically, we bought an older home with great curb appeal, that was in need of aesthetics. In the absence of a cool car to wrench on, this house is my favorite hobby. But I digress...



Please forgive my meandering mind... I'm high on Varethane fumes...

[Moses]

Great house! More pics, please.

[notfarnow]

Background:
About a year ago, I got a deal on 400 sq feet of maple planks. Long story, but the short version is it came from a 220 yr old church that was bought by a one-legged googly eyed drunk who I'm convinced is a pirate. He starts every sentence with "AARRRGH". I call him, "AAARGGHH Jake can I call ya back when I'm vertical?"

But I digress... I bought a truckload of 1" thick, 10" wide and 12' long maple planks, that had spent the last 220 years on the walls inside a church. I paid less than you'd pay for really schitty laminate flooring.

[notfarnow]

More background:

The age of our house is a guesstimate. We know it was originally a farmhouse. It has hand hewn beams making up the structure, and a hand-dug stone lined well in the basement:





The house was completely rebuilt twice... once in the 1920s when they added beautiful trim & hardwood floors. Then again in 1988, when they tore out the trim and nailed plywood over the hardwood floors and carpeted the whole damn house wall-to-wall. We took care of the floors before we moved in 2 years ago:





Essentially, it's an old house with lots of bastardized updates, and we're doing our best to make it a beautiful old home.

I'm way off topic... Varethane fumes... bare with me.

[notfarnow]

Anyhow... every month we have a project of some sorts with the house; some are planned, others sprung upon us on by gravity, moisture or flames.

An ongoing complaint of Mrs Notfarnow has been the outright fugliness and general skankiness of the kitchen.

As it was before we bought it:


So last fall I painted it. It was not just paint, the previous owners/animals smoked nonstop... and the whole house was covered in tobacco residue. We had painted every wall in the house before moving in, but the kitchen still had gummy residue, some from the smoke, and from the deep fat fryer that was a permanent fixture. See the before pic? Look beside the sink... deep fat fryer. It was there every time I was in the house.

This is what came off the cabinets:



I had to clean, sand and then use Zinsser BIN primer before I could even consider putting paint on them. It took 3 months.

After:

[notfarnow]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

The painted kitchen, although a vast improvement, was not quite perfect yet. The floors were ugly vinyl flooring. It was time to do something with that maple I bought from the pirate.

2 months ago I hauled it across town to have it milled. They planed it, jointered it and ripped it. The finished product was near perfect 9 & 9.5" planks.



Luckily, my house has a great garage... 20 x 24 with a semi-finshed loft. I set up shop in the loft. I built a rack so I could put 5 coats of varethane before I laid the floors.

[notfarnow]

Now, the idea of having wood floors came up in another thread months ago.

It'll get wet.

It's not practical.

It's too high maintenance.

This, from 911 owners... for shame.


I wanted to bring some "age" into the house, and these 220 yr old planks were the ticket.

I am pouring myself another drink...

[bryanthompson]

It's encouraging to see what other people are doing for house projects. Keep it coming!

[Zendalar]

Very nice indeed

[notfarnow]

Thanks!

FWIW, it's 138 AM, I just had a celebratory "end of profect" cigar, and I'm half in the bag. I have to work tomorrow.

For the past week, our livingroom has been our kitchen, and my dad is visiting from Montreal.

Real-time picture of interim "kitchen":

[notfarnow]

Methodology:

I can't have the kitchen out of service for ages, while I lay the floors and then sand & wait for varethane to dry. Also, you can't go tongue & groove on plank flooring like this. Too wide.

So, up above the garage I gave one coat on the backs of the boards, and 5 coats to the faces. I sanded between the last 2 coats @ 220 grit.

That took a week. Every night after work I put a coat down... took 3 hours each time. When I sanded it added 1.5 hrs.

To lay the floors, I had to counterbore & screw the boards. Rows of 3 screws, every 18".

[notfarnow]

To plug the screw holes, I didn't want cut dowels, because that would give me end grain which wouldn't sand well and would show up dark when I varethaned. I used a plug cutter from Lee Valley Tools.

Folks, I had to cut 826 plugs.

[notfarnow]

So on friday my father drove down from Monreal. Actually, he was supposed to help my brother peel wallpaper, but who the hell wants to do that? I put him to work instead.

Saturday we screwed down the boards:

[notfarnow]

LOL... pretend you didn't notice the dollar store extension cord. That was my old man... I have to keep an eye on him.

[notfarnow]

So it took us all day saturday to screw the boards in, and to make thresholds into the two livingrooms... not easy in a crooked old house.

(Crooked? When we first moved in, we bought a nice old upright piano and put it in the middle of the livingroom. Within a week, 4 of the inside doors wouldn't shut. The middle of the house had gone down 1/4". Luckily, jack posts were on sale at Home Depo.)

[notfarnow]

Sunday was a lost day, I drove 200 miles to buy a trailer for my sailboat, only to arrive and find the trailer to be so rusted it was compostable. I was pissed, but had a nice drive with my old man.

On monday, dad, Mrs Notfarnow & I set up a production line to plug those 826 screw holes.

I punched the screw holes with a homemade tool to taper them, Mrs Notfarnow glued the holes, and dad gently hammered them flush. It took 8 hours.

[notfarnow]

On Tuesday, I gently sanded the plugs. I did so by hand, using 220 grit. After vacuuming and wiping the floors down, I put a coat of polyeurethane over the plugs.


It was starting to look really, really nice.

Sanding:


This is what they looked like today when I got home from work:

[notfarnow]

Tonight I came home after work, excited to put the final coat down right after supper.

Instead, dad wanted to look at a 450SL that was for sale locally. That took us two hours... the 72 yr old seller had owned the car for 20 yrs and was seemingly screening buyers. It was his baby and he wanted it to have a good home. It was immaculate. The bottom of that car was cleaner than the tops of our pots & pans. The seller liked dad, and dad is sleeping on it, as we speak. The only downside: the car is metallic schit brown.

So, I got home at ~830pm and got to work.

[notfarnow]

Here we go folks, the last post of the night...

I got home, and gently sanded the floors by hand. I don't like lumps.

Then I vacuumed.

Then I wiped the floors down with clean rags damp with mineral spirits.

Then I put on the last coat of Miniwax Satin polyurethane. It took 2 hours.

This is what I am looking at now:


So that's it folks... basically a 2 month project finished tonight. Already, I can tell you it's changed the whole look & feel of our house. I'm pleased as punch, dead tired and half drunk. I have to work in 5 hours, but I'm so damn happy I can't sleep.

[Moneyguy1]

Fantastic!!

A candidate for the golden hammer award!!