After stripping the gunk off the hallway floor, it needed to be sanded.  I’m very glad I ended up sanding them down a little too, it is so much softer to walk on.

The sanding didn’t help much with the water stains themselves, but it evened all the colors and tones enough to look well-aged and well-lived-in.  In fact, once I was done sanding, it reminded me a lot of all the floors I used as inspiration for the last dollhouse.

I sanded them with my little hand-held sander.  Which is actually on its deathbed.  In fact, it attempted suicide a couple times during the process.  I can’t say I was happy it didn’t succeed…this guy has given me trouble from the beginning.  But it did hold on and we finished the floor. (This is the one I had, and this is the one I replaced it with, replacement is going strong YEARS later. Affiliate links.)

AND, once the floor was finished, we finally put baseboards up.  We’re not sure why, but when the previous owners put drywall up in here, they left it a good inch-and-a-half (in some spots) off the floor.  Even with the 4″ baseboard up, shoe molding was required to cover the giant gaps between the crooked wall and the floor.

We added baseboard cap to match the house’s original baseboards, and then caulked and painted it all.  Here is our progress so far (unfortunately, the walls were already half-painted in the “before” photo, but imagine them all the dingy, flat yellow).

I also painted a little pattern on the plywood where the floor grate used to be, just a temporary measure until we figure out what to do there.  But in the mean time, it doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb anymore.

Just a few more things left to do in here and this space will be done!

The post The hallway before-and-after appeared first on Little Victorian.

The upstairs hallway floor has finally been stripped.  But unfortunately, as I suspected, there is water damage.  (Apparently there was a leaky roof at some point before we bought the house.)

Here’s a reminder of what the floor looked like after we pulled the carpet up:

Spots and splatters everywhere.

I decided on a paint stripper instead of sanding for two reasons:

1. I LOVE the texture of our old hardwood.
2. With all of the layers of stuff on these floors, sandpaper gums up in no time, which causes you to throw away dozens of sheets of otherwise perfectly good sandpaper.  (I tried it in the living room–awful.)

So, for stripping the hardwood without sanding, I used my trusty Citristrip(not sponsored), just like I did on the stairs.  It’s easy to use and the fumes aren’t too bad if you keep the windows open.

The instructions say to put the Citristrip in a metal bowl and use it from there.  If you’re stripping a flat surface, it’s an unnecessary (and wasteful) step, I just squeeze it right from the jug onto the floor.  Brush it out with a chip brush.

I left it there for anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on how badly spotted the section was.

After it sits, scrape it up, and most of the varnish, paint, drywall mud splatters along with it.  A plastic scraper is really what should be used, but I didn’t have one, so I VERY CAREFULLY used a metal putty blade.

I definitely recommend using a small cardboard box to scrape all the gunk into (shoebox-sized, only thicker, because it the liquid will seep through).  You’ll want something sturdy, and there will be A LOT of gunk.

After the majority of the stripper was up, I wiped the area with a few paper towels to clean up the puddles that settled in the grooves of the wood.  Then I followed with a very light, very gentle scrubbing with a plastic brush, which will get the varnish and paint out of all of the dents and grooves that the scraper couldn’t reach.

Even after the scraping and the wiping with paper towel, my brush looked like this every time:

Ew.

Follow that with one more round of wiping with paper towel.  Once all the visible stripper is up, mineral spirits need to be applied to neutralize the stripper and clean the area.

Wet some paper towel with mineral spirits and wipe.  This job requires at least one roll of paper towel.  Keep wiping with fresh towels until they no longer come up dirty.  This could take some time.  Quite a bit of time.  I turned on a Pandora comedy station and made myself comfortable.

In the end, we had this:

Eh.  Unfortunately, this is only “Part 1” because of the water damage.  None of the boards are rotten or so damaged that they need to be replaced, but the coloring was left very spotty, and the grain of many of the planks is raised significantly.

Part 2: sanding, coming soon.

The post Removing 130 years of gunk from the hardwood floor (part 1) appeared first on Little Victorian.

While we were working on the second floor last week, we pulled up the last remaining piece of carpeting from the house.  This is how the hallway had looked for a few months:

The painting was finished a while ago, but we finally tore out that last bit of icky carpet that was here when we moved in.

Unfortunately, there are one or two issues.

But we did know that before we pulled out the carpet.  Except for the plywood filled hole with about 975 more nails than it needs.  Those are always a surprise.  The previous remodelers sure did like to make certain things were WELL fastened.

For right now, the whole thing looks like this:

(Never mind the jewelry on the door–it’s currently an orphan of the bedroom remodel.)

Now our to-do list for the hallway is:

• Paint the walls
• Pull up the carpet
• Finish the ceiling patch
• Paint the ceiling
• Replace the light fixture
• Add baseboards
• Add transition pieces
• Strip the floor
• Seal the floor
• Trim the office door
• Re-trim the window
• Paint the window

So much stuff for such a little space!  We’re getting there, though, even if it’s slow.

But on the bright side, look what the Hubs found in the big hole in between the hallway and bedroom!

That will be a very special addition to the fisherman’s cottage.

The post Things have to get ugly before they can get pretty appeared first on Little Victorian.