This is where I started. The boards had nastiness on the edges that would need to be removed later.
After pulling the floor up to this point, it was decided that the hallway would have to come up before any more rows in the front bedroom could be removed. Note the beautiful original pink color along the baseboards and doors.
After pulling up the carpeting in the hallway, it became apparent that somebody forgot to use a drop cloth when they painted the hallway.
Note the original green color around the doors and baseboard.
The paint is easier to see, but more importantly are the rows of top-nailed spiral nails. They didn't want to come up for anything. The double nailed 3 ¼” boards were the worst. It took me a week to pull up the hallway and I split or otherwise damaged a lot of boards. I didn't spend that much time on any other room.
The back bedroom wasn't to bad, though it seemed to have more finishing nails than the other rooms.
Tools of preference include pry-bar, hammer and diagonal pliers for those pesky finishing nails.
Note the original in your face yellow along the baseboards.
After replacing a badly damaged plank, I ran chalk lines along the joists and screwed 3 – 2 ½” screws into each board along the line. With the sub-floor securely fastened it was time to lay down 15 # felt paper and ½” plywood sheets.
Note to self: Be sure to mark location of floor vents on paper BEFORE securing plywood to joists.
A different angle.
The existing bookcase was handy and kind of cool, but the wood was putrid and the closet was just to small to accommodate two people. I used masking tape to layout proposed walls. I liked the “flow” the corner door would create, but later decided that I would only gain one useful wall and not be able to put any furniture where the dresser is shown.
Note the dark stained area on the left side of proposed door.
Just like the other bedrooms, the floorboards were carefully removed.
Damn… looks like I'll have to do something with that conduit if I want to have a closet light.
Once the new sub-floor was in, it was time to frame in the new walk-in closet.
The closet went up surpassingly fast. New drywall all the way around, inside and out. Thanks to Arnie for letting me use his cool drywall sanding tool. The biggest problem was that the ceiling wasn't exactly level or flat. Note the dip in the ceiling where the arrow is and the bookcase was. All bedroom walls and ceilings were painted after the closet was ready.
The boards on this side of the wood rack have been cleaned and are awaiting planing. The boards on the other side still need to be scraped. Let’s not even talk about the big pile of boards still up in the living room! Scraping the boards was a most heinous job. The edges of the boards had 50 years of debris and gunk stuck to them. I'm sure as the boards contracted and expanded with weather, "stuff" fell between the cracks and got stuck. Boards were scraped with a combination of the drill press with a nylon wheel and hand scraping with a putty knife. This was by far the worst part of the whole project. I dreaded coming home from work knowing that I had to scrape. Fortunately my wife Eliza (fiance at the time) helped me scrape on numerous occasions.
What can I say… I love this planer! What a beast! Luckily I only hit 1 embedded metal object after I changed the blades. The only real problem I had was my poor electrical distribution. CB resets were common
A good number of boards were quite long. They were much harder to scrape.
Does the basement floor look like it’s ever seen water?
My brother Michael was gracious enough to help me put this puzzle together. Good thing all the boards were labeled and color coded. It really only took a day to get the boards laid out. It took a week to swap out boards I didn't like or needed to fabricate using extra boards from the old MBR closet area.
The front bedroom with boards all laid out and ready for the pneumatic nailer.
I knew I'd have work to do in the closet area. I did a lot of board swapping in this area to maximize the long boards in these rows. I plan to tile the closet and decided not to cut the boards at the closet door until I was ready to nail that row. I wanted a nice tight fit to the transitional threshold at the doorway.
After I had the closet framed and drywall up, Eliza came over (having not seen it yet) and causally remarked, "Why didn't you put the light switch on the inside of the closet?". D'OH! Ok, I guess I probably should have done that, but it didn't occur to me at the time.
For not being nailed, the floor looks pretty good looking across the room. The closet walls are actually finished in these photos.
Now where’s that pneumatic power nailer?…
It took the entire weekend to get the boards nailed in place using a pneumatic nailer. After getting all of the boards nailed I went through and filled all of the nail holes (from the finishing nails) with ZAR, oak colored, wood filler. I had purchased a gallon of filler and probably only used a ¼ of it.
It took me 2 weeks to get the floor sanded. I started out with the pictured pad sander and after an entire weekend of sanding decided that it wasn't cutting enough. The following weekend I rented a drum sander and edger combo and went to town. Ahhh.. much better. The drum sander didn't kick up much dust and was easier to use. Opps.. be careful how you set the drum down. The edger was much harder to use and left plenty of swirl marks.
Be careful not to apply stain wider than you can wipe it off (pictured above). Also don't forget to shut off lights behind you. The closet light in this room stayed on all night because I couldn't get to it by the time I remembered.
I stained all of the edges with a brush and used a lambs wool applicator on a stick and MinWax golden oak stain out of a paint pan. The stick applicator worked very well and covers a lot of ground very quickly.
Staining really makes a big difference and brings out the beautiful grain in this 50 year old oak. Almost done staining! YEA!
The polyurethane was applied in the same manner, except that I used a watering can filled with polyurethane and poured it directly on the floor. It took exactly 1 gallon for each coat of polyurethane.
The hallway after staining. After the struggle I had getting the boards up in the hallway and all of the holes that needed to be filled, I was concerned with how the hallway would turn out. It came out great!
Time for some polyurethane.
3 coats of McCloskey water based, gloss polyurethane and the floors look sweet!
This is the master bedroom. The walk-in closet can been seen at right. The black strip is the felt paper moisture barrier that is underneath the hardwood. I decided not put a door on the closet since it would only obstruct access and because the dog sleeps in the closet. Since the closet will be open, I will put ceramic tile in the closet.
The front bedroom is looking sweet as well. Guess I'm going to have to get those baseboard covers painted and put back on sometime…
A trip to Lowes and nearly $300 later, all of the closets have wire shelving. It took a closet to figure out how to put them up well, but after that it was easy sailing. I recommend starting with a closet “kit” (pictured above) before doing the custom closet with no directions.
A 4 foot level comes in handy – good thing my brother had one I could borrow… You know.. I really should have my own…
As discussed above, the walk-in closet floor will be brown 13” tiles.
I opted for a four foot, 4-bulb florescent light with oak crown moulding surround. You can never have to much light in a closet!
This is the tile that I chose to put in the closet. It wasn't to hard a job, but the cramped quarters made it somewhat difficult to move around. It turned out really nice though and I'm very pleased with it.
