A refinished floor

 Geez its been awhile. I keep thinking "gotta write the blog" and keep not doing it. Fortunately a bunch has happened.

Most recently I refinished the floor at camp:

This is a good before shot, you can see, down at the bottom the damage from 60 years of usage.

The floor is not actually "flooring". Its just 4" birch boards and family lore tells that those boards were green when the place was built.

I didn't realize (but should have) that those boards weren't flat and because they weren't flat I couldn't just quick sand them like I'd planned. I had to buy 40 grit belts and cross sand (sand against the grain) to flatten the floor. This took 5 HOURS on my knees with a belt sander.

The 60 and 80 grit passes took 1 hour each (16x24 room) although during that last pass my knee pad straps sawed 1 inch square chunks off the back of each knee... No picture, trust me, you don't want to see this one.

I bought a new "WEN" brand corded belt sander for the job and it was flawless. That first pass produced 5 gallons of sawdust.

After sanding to 80 grit I took my old Harbor Freight palm sander around the outside of the room, also at 80 grit. I bought that sander to refinish a hood to put on Hammie my '83 240D when I bought it the second time. That'd have been 2007ish. I've gotten good value for money on that.

Then swept the floor 3 times, vacuumed the floor 3 times and ran a tack cloth over it 3 times. Even with all that I still pulled up mouse turds on the roller while putting down the finish.

This is after one coat of oil based finish. Unfortunately I was unable to locally source additional oil based finish so additional coats will have to wait until July. Because of the wait I'll have to sand again to 220 grit. I'll do that with the palm sander, it shouldn't take all that long, just enough to scuff and provide adhesion.