Kee has become my "little crack whore", and I don't mince words on myself... on my mid-50 knees every day, stretching out over the months..... I'm the afternoon house hooker, down on my knees more than the Chicken Ranch's bj hostess at a businessman's happy hour special.
Each wooden floor - four bedrooms, a spare room, one very large living room, plus one long hallway - requires six to eight
knee jobs - each. I've never refinished wood floors before, so I download info and read product information on backs of various products .... trying to form a consensus of action. Then I end up doing what I do with most heavy dirt and greasy grime - Spray 9 the shit out of it.....straight Spray 9 and hot water, I scrub and scrub until clean, then towel soak-up/dry; followed by a clean water wash, then scrub with the mild wood stripper and then another clean water wash and towel soak-up/dry. I figure I've got it cleaned up back to at least 1946. Even this is a great improvement.
Next is stain and polyurethene, a one-step MinWax product, a colour called Bombay Mahogany, it just transcends the wood to a wine-in-the-pine translucent glow. I do squares of about 2 feet at a time, brushing on, a short wait for stain sinkage, then blending the edges into the next square, throwing away the rags when the stain gums them to a sticky, smearing mass. There are just a few small spots of the floors eaten by bugs, reducing the wood to powder... they take a bit of filler, a bit of rest to cure, then get the stain. In the 30s section, the two older bedrooms take two coats of stain. The living room... I'm not completely satisfied with the first two coats, so down I go again, and three times' the charm. Even without wax, after cleaning and staining, the results are so deeply gratifying. A large percentage of the house's craftsman charm comes from the pine panelled living room and the multiple wood floors. The time and effort in reviving their translucent, warm glow is well spent.
D, Mr Modern, wants us to sand down all floors, then stain and perma-seal. But I want the life lines, the wrinkles, the marks, earned through decades and generations of family vacations. Even after severe cleaning, all those chips, scars and stains and the shadows of ghosts of various sized carpets, showcase the character and life experiences of the 80 year pine and 55 year oak. The previous owners did a lot to keep the house in good nick for all these years... and for it's age, the old girl/boy [choose your gender of decreption], while showing a load of wear and tear, has solid bones. Very, very good bones. Just needs some work, as they say in the cosmetic business.
The oak floors, put in 25 years later in the newer section of the house, are younger, but
not in better condition.... the west bedroom had a major roof leak, repaired several years ago, but the floors under the leak are discoloured noticeably.
The hall was lined for decades with a long braid wool rug that ground itself into the grain..... another major knee job for Dame NeezARekka. In the hall linen closet, the floor's been eaten by insect attackers and powders to a talc fineness when touched... almost the whole 3' wide closet floor is a write-off.
To one of many rescues - Habitat For Humanity in Windsor - a complete package of lovely pecan wood for $25! It won't match the wood on the hall floor, but it'll be behind the wall, so that won't matter. We create our fantastic, large, hall length major clothes closet by: (1) in the east bedroom closet, cutting open the wall that backs to the hall bathroom, doorframing it for access into the hall bathroom, we'll make this a true ensuite bedroom; (2) demo'ing the bathroom closet beside the hallway door to the bath and creating a new wall in the bathroom on the hallside, at the same depth of the closet just taken out, so now the bathroom has no closet and no hallway door; (3) installing 2 new door frames along the hall, one about where the original closet was, the other, about 3' further down the hall, right where the old hall bathroom door was; (4) installing a central light, ceiling and wall drywall, mudding, sanding, remudding (aka MSR), painting, installing the HFH wood, then erecting 8' of DIY closet metal. This is one of our first major alterations - 1: a long, hall length closet that has closed off the bathroom from the hall and, 2: an ensuite bathroom for the east bedroom suite.
We decide that each closet end having an upper and lower shirt length bar would be best, with just one small longer dress space, at "my" end, with shelving from bottom to top on the far right and in the middle of the two shirt length bar sections. We pack as much shelving in as sensible.
Even though we've taken the lakeside bedroom, with the small closet that will be reformatted, for our own, most of our clothes will be in this closet. But in the bedroom, we'll have our bed, reading lamps, our underwear, our robes - and the lakeview.
Every morning, we'll see what we did this for..... so, when we set up the bedframe, I say -
face the bed towards the lake.
As I was staining/varathaning, I was scouring somewhere else - kijiji - for a buffer.... like my mum had years ago. I found one in Chatham, from an elderly Dutch/Canadian couple, selling their home and 99% of their posessions as they readied their new quarter mil RV to travel across Canada. For $25, the Hoover double-headed buffer and attachments was mine. Months later, for $2, I bought a triangular 3-headed Electrolux buffer/washer (with liquid cleanser tank), with all attachments. I like the Electrolux better, easier control and corner acc
ess.
Then waxing.... somehow I've regressed - and happily - to the 50s, buying Johnson's Paste Wax and finding cheesecloth. Again, the method is a 2 foot square, with knee pads and slide cushion... I try to go quickly so it doesn't dry hard. Then the whizz of the buffer. This is just like slow, but still unbelievable, magic.
My god, the look of those floors... the first time I finished half a room - the comparision of the gleaming recovered wood to the unfinished portion. I swear it felt happy, I know it felt warm, thickly smooth, deeply clear. I called Kee in to see, I was so proud of the result of all my hard work. Hard, slow and painful work. The borrowed volleyball knee pads were from the school and the slide cushion a folded-up crib mattress pad left behind.... I'm getting up like a seventy, then eighty, then ninety year old floor finisher. But worth it. I have a very special relationship with my floors, we give something to each other.
We put 6 x 8 oriental rugs in two of the bedrooms, sideways under the bed, so there'll be a fabric comfort for early morning feet. In our son's bedroom, the rug is a very special ragrug, made
30 years ago by Kee's uncle, who took the blue and white men's shirts I bought at the resale store and created, on his loom, a carpet of blue/white seismic bars, three long ragrugs sewn together, each two feet wide by ten feet long. I sat on that rug for decades, in front of the washer, emptying the dryer, folding laundry, diapers, baby clothes, teen jeans, acres of towels and sheets, work clothes, sports jerseys, skating outfits..... Thirty years later, that rug doesn't have a loose seam in it, despite being through the washer and dryer five or six times a year for 30 years. Now, it matches perfectly the washed blue and grey/cream colours of the bedroom, looks perfectly custom cottagey and lives a slightly more upscale retirement.
The living room (from move-in April till present day has the oriental from our former dining room) will eventually wind up with a large champagne/grey short twisted shag rug. Because the living room is surrounded by the kitchen, sunroom and the hallway of the west three rooms, even with indirect window light, the pine panelling and floor naturally keep it dark. The light shag will work with the light coloured ceiling, creating, reflecting more light. A sculptured 40s style runner will go down the length of the hall, approximately 20 feet, helping keep feet warm and echoes down.
Caveat: newly-awakened, waxed floors are the devil's slides. Be careful, be afraid, learn the shuffle.
After tearing out the cupboards, leaving the kitchen absolutely empty, the guys ripped up the ancient linoleum. D and Kee lay down a new subfloor, walking it again and again, to find squeaks and rolls. Fast forward wall repair, plumbing redo, electrical reinvention, the new lower cupboards go in. Then the tiling began. The pattern is laid on the diagonal, illusioning the long kitchen to a greater width.
Kee... becoming a Titian of the Tiles, Goya of the Grout. I pick out the tiles for the kitchen, mudroom, sunroom, small hall and bath - then repick them, repick them, repick them, and he lays down the cream and grey-veined matte finish small and large tiles, diagonally, perfectly... that's the kitchen, small bath and small hall done. It looks like a perfect cottage floor. We wait for a sale to buy identical tiles for the mudroom and sunroom, hoping they're still in stock when we can buy them.
Next I trudge home green bathroom tile samples, then resamples and more resamples... Kee creates a totally modern, yet period-appropriate pattern with the smaller cream and grey, wavy edged, matte finish ceramic tiles.
The kitchen and small hall, small bathroom flank the living room, with the middle french doors opening to the sunroom. Tiling with identical, light-coloured, stone-looking tile on all sides gives a traditional yet modern, quiet, cohesive look on three sides of the living room, around the dark wood of the pine floored and walled central room. When the sunroom is laid with the same floor - a trinity of the same tile - the view from the living room will be a subtle theme of calm unity to the whole.
The floor for the 2BBath will remain oak.
Thank God.
I'm floored.
