So about three months ago Kris and I decided to test what was under our black and white checkered vinyl kitchen floor. I didn't mind the look of our kitchen, other than it being kind of mini and not having any drawers, I like my original wood cabinets and the formica countertop.....but I really didn't like the floors. So, we did some investigating and this is what we undercovered.
Underneath the black and white vinyl was red and white checkered linoleum tiles. These things took us (Kris) a few days to chip away at, which exposed this black tar.....also known as cutback adhesive. We tried tons of adhesive removers, all unfortunately pretty harsh since the safer methods we heard about just weren't cutting it. After about a month of working on small sections each night after work and living with plastic on our floors we got as much of it up as we could. We were also simultaneously demo-ing our existing basement stairs and pantry, having new ones built by our green builder friends at New Earth and creating a 5 ft opening between our kitchen and pantry.
After as much of the cutback was off as we could handle and the “new” floor was in place….it was time to rent the floor sander. I believe we needed a drum sander for this amount of adhesive, but the man at Home Depot suggested an orbit sander, called U-Sand-It. It took driving back, buying lots more sand paper and extending our contract from 4 hours to 24 hours…..but eventually we got it to a point we were happy with.
Some of the black markers from the adhesive….or possibly water damage (who knows, the floor is 90 years old) didn’t come off, but hey, if we wanted a new looking floor we could have bought one! Next was time to finish it off!
We used an oil based semi gloss polyurethane because that is what is on the rest of the floors and we have liked it so far. The first coat, by recommendation of my dad, we cut with half paint thinner. It made it easy to get used to applying the finish with the wool mop head that Home Depot suggested, and then we progressively used less paint thinner in each coat until the fourth and final coat was all polyurethane. This is how is looked before drying….it is not this shiny at all anymore and we love it!
3 comments:
Oh wow - that's a lot of work! I really admire that. I would have taken one look at all that adhesive, picked up the phone and called a professional. 5 thousand dollars later, I might have had something almost as cool as that, but probably not.
Thanks! it took a long time...seems so quick posted up like that, but months of walking on plastic! plus...I had to save money for the snazzy new appliances :o)
yeah the plastic was pretty nasty, but completely worth it for this kind of beautiousness! i can't wait to see the new fridge M!
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