This floor was one of the most unique I have worked on. It was located in Middleton, Idaho near the Boise River. The house was beautiful and the kitchen was absolutely gorgeous. The floor was strip plank hickory and the previous home owner had distressed the floor by using chisels and hammers and they then “stained” the hickory with paint and a brush. The floor looked horrendous. The new homeowners wanted to try to make the floor work and not have to replace it.
Refinishing the floor presented interesting challenges since the distressing didn’t allow for the sanders to be be on a constantly flat surface. At all times we had to be careful of the 1/2″ gouges in the floor to ensure the sander did not create a divot in the floor. We also had issues with our floor smoother the “trio” as it could never be perfectly flat and it was constantly sanding where there was no wood. The sandpaper would catch these edges of the distressing 1/2″ gouges and be torn or ripped off the sander. It was a constant struggle to make the floor sand and behave how we wanted it to.
The final sanding sequence was as follows:
- 60 grit belt
- 80 grit edger
- vacuum
- 60 grit trio
- 100 grit edger
- vacuum
- 100 grit trio
- vacuum
- 120 grit edger
- 120 grit trio
- vacuum
- stain – DuraSeal Jacobean
The floor turned out very nice. A good amount of the the distressing disappeared when we belt sanded and trio’d the floor. The less distressing made the floor show more beauty as it wasn’t overwhelmed by digs and gouges. The floor had a much more even look to it, but, still kept the distressing look to make it look custom and interesting. The floor looked awesome in the end and the homeowners were thrilled with the outcome.
