The floor continues

 The difficulty with the great northern estate is really the distance from the great northern estate to, well, anywhere. That of course means I can't be around as much as I would like to and thus everything takes twice as long as I would like.

So, you'll remember a couple weeks ago when I started refinishing the floor in the camp. When I left the floor had been sanded to 80 grit and the first coat of finish put down.

I used an oil based finish with the old-school thinking that it would be a tougher coating for a floor that gets kind of tortured. The satin finish is supposed to not show imperfections so bad as gloss.

The result looked okay but felt terrible. I think that first coat raised the grain of the wood and made it feel really rough and unpleasant.

I'd used the entire gallon on the floor and couldn't locally source any more oil based finish, the stuff I could get was all water based and thus incompatible with what I had already put down.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I'm back with 2.5 gallons of the oil based finish, honestly this is the size can I should have bought in the first place. If I'd looked around a little more at Home Depot I'd have found it.

Because of the delay I needed to sand to 220 grit. I did that with my old Harbor Freight palm sander. This wouldn't have been so bad except that the backs of my knees were still sore from the 5 hour slog getting the floor flat. My knee pad straps had really dug in. I should have taken a few minutes to rig up my sander on a stick so I could do the job standing up. Oh well.

Once again I had to clean, clean, clean all the dust left behind and finally put down some of the new semi-gloss.

Semi-gloss gives a balance between that nice shiny look and hiding any imperfections in the job.

This is the dried 3rd coat just before I put down the 4th.

So with 4 coats down I'd intended to give a couple days for the floor to dry and harden but Independence day intervened and I didn't have a chance to get back to it. This is probably for the best, the longer it can harden without getting walked on much, the better. I'll be back at it soon.

While I was waiting for the floor to dry I took a minute to clean the accumulated cruft off of the pipe that goes under the dam. When I first walked out to the pipe a frog jumped. Later as I was cleaning he came back. Frogs are common around the edge of the pond but I rarely get to see them, they jump away before I get close. This guy hung out for 10 or more minutes just watching me. He was pretty big for a frog in our area, maybe just a bit smaller than my fist.

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.