Refinishing Hard Wood Floors {Part 1}

 Tall Tan Man and I have been hard at work on our house.  Our goal is to get the floors and the walls repaired/painted before we move in.  These are not the smallest of tasks we are figuring out.  Our floors were covered with awful blue, stained carpet.  We had a glimmer of hope there was wood under the carpet because our back bedroom was wood.

YAY!!!

Day One {3 hours}

This day was all about getting the carpet out and some of the floor padding up.  This is the one tool you will need:

{carpet knife}

  At first we were going to just use a box cutter, but one of my coworkers convinced me {and gave me} a carpet knife.  THANKS TONY!  Holy cow.  This is a must have.  It makes cutting the carpet easy easier.  We just start in one corner and cut our carpet in smaller strips to help with the disposal process.  

 Our bedroom had extra beautiful carpet :)   

 Day Two {5 hours} 

Getting the padding up was a slow and tedious process.  I guess I should actually say getting the padding up was easy but removing the staples was another story!  I just started on one side and began pulling the staples up one at a time.  I used a flat head screwdriver and pliers.  I looked online for a better way and could not find one.  This process is not difficult but it is just so slow…oh and don’t wear your favorite shorts because there is a good chance you will scoot your bum across a staple and ruin them.  Tall Tan Man used paint scraper to remove the staples.  We had a little different way of doing this and I wanted to share so you could keep your options open. :)

Can you see where the poofs of padding are?  That is where the staples are.  At this point you are at the mercy of how staple happy the carpet installer was.  I used the flat screwdriver to pry up the staple, and then if it didn’t come up all the way I would pull it up with the pliers.   

Was it worth it? 

I think so! 

Day Three{ish} {5 hrs}

The worst part of this whole beginning process was getting the plaster/glue/linoleum up.   

That stuff was the devil.  I started to scrape it off with a putty knife then I moved to using a garden hoe.  TTM tried wetting it down and scraping which helped.  Then he decided to use a paint stripper after we had about 90% off the plaster and it scraped off like a gem.  {you gotta be kidding me}.  Lesson learned! 

Well, if you follow me on {instagram} you know I will be back soon to talk about our experiences with the floor sander... Hooray for being a home owner! 

{LJ}