How We Installed Our Reclaimed Floors

Last weekend was quite productive around here.  Check, check, check it out:

The finished reclaimed tobacco barn wood floor

I know!  They're beautiful... but they took a lot of work.  It all started late Friday night.  Mr. Green Stuff and I put on our work gloves and jumped right in to our pile of splintery wood.  For us the real beauty of this wood is that it came from those old barns in Pennsylvania but that also gave us our own set of problems.  The splinters were the worst for me.  (And by "the worst for me" I don't mean to imply that I ended up with the most splinters because I didn't. I am the only one still whining about them though.)  I just mean the other issues like a few warped boards and figuring out the layout were easier to work around.

When the flooring came from Olde Wood Limited we received four different widths of boards.  I didn't really think it was a big deal because we had roughly (pun intended) 25% of each of the 3", 4", 5", and 6" widths.  I figured we would pick out the boards as we worked our way across the room and it would be fine.  I'm not sure what I was thinking!  I should have known that Mr. Green Stuff would never go for that.  But I digress.... back to Friday night!  We laid out our floor.  There is no particular pattern but we did arrange it so our favorite boards are in the middle of the room. 

Hmm... decisions, decisions

After we had our design arranged, we wanted a "map" of where each board would go.  With this plan Saturday could be all about installing rather than about thinking or planning.  We labeled the back of each piece of wood with a permanent marker.  I wanted this to be as simple as possible (remember I originally wanted to "wing" it) so I naturally called the first row "Row 1" and then each board was given a letter with A being the one to the far left of the room, then B, C, etc.  On the boards that needed trimmed to fit, I put an "X" on the end that I wanted removed.  Confused?  Here's an example: the eighteenth row needed four boards to span the room so we had boards labeled 18A, 18B, 18C, and 18D. 18C needed the right end cut in order to fit so there was an X on the back of it where it would be shortened. We also wrote down (on the map) that they were 3" wide.

As we labeled them, I stacked them on the far side of the room with the last row (28 if you're curious) on the bottom. Once they were in the correct order all we really needed to do during installation was to grab the ones on top and make sure we used A first. (O.K., maybe I'm totally into organization, too.)

All stacked up and ready to go.

Saturday morning while I was teaching yoga, Mr. Green (with a little help) began installing the floor.  Other than being so loud that we had to open the windows and wear ear plugs, it went remarkably well... aside from a few more splinters.  It worked out well.  From our Friday night design, we only needed to substitute one board because the original was warped and replace another one due to a miss-cut.  The whole floor was installed in time for a late lunch.

Ask around before purchasing tools. My brother-in-law let us borrow this "gun."

After our break, the treads were installed on the stairs and the landing was redesigned (we stole our replacement boards from here) and installed.

I love the look of the white paint with the natural floors.

Some friends stopped by to see our progress, which led to some Dark and Stormies, which in turn led to a later-than-anticipated night.  We didn't want them to leave because we knew something else that was "dark and stormy" was looming; the polyurethane was calling our names.  I was dreading this because my mom had warned me about how stinky polyurethane is.  I tried to find one with very few VOCs but it's not easy.  I found a water-based one (rather than oil) but it still had "less than 275 grams per liter."

Guess what?  It turns out that it's not that hard to seal a floor and the polyurethane we found wasn't stinky.  In fact, the smell was almost unnoticeable.  We wanted to get two coats on before we went to bed so around midnight we watched the documentary Bag It while we waited for the first coat to dry.  (I'm pretty sure I saw about 90% of it. From what I saw, I think it is definitely worth a watch!  Plus, the friend I borrowed it from highly recommends it.) Then we applied the second coat.

What?  Everyone else doesn't scavenge for danger tape?

Sunday morning we loved the way the floors looked but some of the really big scratches and knotholes were still rough, which made me fear splinters.  In order to avoid them, we decided to apply another coat.  I sanded the floors with an orbital sander using 220 grit paper.  This barely even dulled the sheen but it was enough to get the next coat to adhere.   And the next coat!  After the fourth coat, we were ready to call it quits.  And not just because the polyurethane was starting to stink.  The floor looked great but there were two spots that were still a bit raised.  It wasn't enough for me to notice with my hand but I could feel my socks snagging on it SO we sanded one more time and applied our final coat of poly!  (We're officially on a nickname basis, poly and I, after all the time we've spent together.)

Now they look and feel gorgeous.  I'm loving our "new" floor.  I'm going to need to keep an eye one Mr. Green Stuff though.  He crazily mentioned how great it would look in the dining room.  I'm just going to ignore that comment for now.

Have you ever started a project like this where you assumed you could figure it out but had no real knowledge about the process when you started?  I didn't even know what an orbital sander was before this!

Peace,

Stacey