Floor Putty

I mentioned that we had to remove a number of nails from the floor before sanding them, in order to prevent damage to both the floors and the sanders. When P used more appropriate nails to fasten down the now-loose floorboards, he didn't use the old holes, but drilled new ones. So now there were empty nail holes in the floor.

Our favorite flooring book talked about using putty to fill in the nail holes in the floor. This doesn't seem like a terribly common practice--at least based on our attempts to find floor putty. We were disappointed by how few options were carried by the Home Depot where we were renting the floor sanders, but we couldn't find any other area stores that carried any putty. Conversely, when we looked for putty products on the internet, we were overwhelmed by the number of choices.

P confronts this type of problem all the time at work--which of the myriad products available will be fulfill his company's needs? What are the specs on the product? What kind of wear and tear will it stand up to? So he approached this just as he would with his employer: he phoned a major distributor that carried a large number of these products, and asked which would best suit our needs.

They recommended only one for our purposes: Woodwise Wood Patch.  So we ordered ourselves a gallon, and P got to patching.

We initially tried patching before sanding, since the patching compound itself would need to be sanded smooth.  But P quickly discovered that this wasn't the best approach.  Our floors were stained a darker color, and we were planning to sand off the stain and leave them in a natural color.  But the process of working the putty into the holes caused bits of the old stain to chip off and get mixed into the putty, leaving it a darker color than we wanted.  So the puttying had to be done after the initial sanding to remove the finish, but before the final sanding to smooth the floors--that is, between our second and third weekends of sanding.

The putty dried a little lighter than its wet color:

Once sanded, it looked like this:  ( I took this picture before we vacuumed, please excise the sanding dust filling the cracks.)

Yeah, the nail holes are still rather visible.  The Wood Patch comes in a wide variety of colors, and we ordered the red oak version, since that's what our floors are make of.  However, our floor boards have a remarkable range of natural color variation from board to board:

So it's understandable that the Wood Patch doesn't match most of the boards, since they don't match each other.  And even though many of the nail holes are still visible, we're glad that we matched them.  It should improve the durability of of floors (because things can't get stuck in the holes and pull at the boards), and will definitely make it easier to keep them clean.  I can simply sweep the smooth boards, instead of having to vacuum out each and every hole.

Bedroom color dilemma

We have three bedrooms in our house: a master bedroom, and two which we refer to as the front and back bedrooms.  We'll be setting up the back bedroom as my office (i.e., the bedroom of the curtain fabric).  P and I are planning to set up our things in the front bedroom, while we complete some additional projects on the master.  We'll probably be using this as our bedroom for at least a year to come.  I wonder if we'll ever get around to moving out: the master bedroom is short on windows and fairly dark, while the front bedroom has fantastic light. 

Our current priority in the renovations projects is to complete this bedroom.  It will be lovely to have one room finished that we can retreat to at the end of a day of working on the house.  And hopefully the whole house will start to feel a little more ordered when we can finally put some of our furniture where it actually belongs!

P did a great job of prepping the room for painting.  A number of the nails holding our drywall to the studs had loosened, so you could see (if you really looked hard) the nail heads bulging out.  He pulled all of these nails, refastened the drywall to the studs with screws, and spackled over all of the resulting nail holes and screw heads. 

I did some work to clean up the crown molding.  The plaster that had smoothed the joint between the molding and the ceiling was starting to look pretty scruffy.

So I chipped it off.  I assume this is plaster.  It certainly crumbled like plaster when I gave it a good whack.  Today builders would do this job with caulk, but I doubt that anything like the plasticizers used in modern caulk had been developed in 1954.  Or did people still call whatever they used then caulk, even though it isn't much like what we use today?  Anyway, I used good, modern caulk to seal the newly exposed seam.

We primed all of the wood I had exposed in removing the plaster, and all of P's new spackle.  We painted the ceiling and the crown molding.  Hopefully today I'll finish painting the trim on the windows and doors.  At that point, all that will be required to complete the room will be: 1. to paint the walls, and 2. to replace the baseboard molding that we removed before refinishing the floors.

Now we reach the really tricky part: choosing a wall color.  I'll be painting all of the living areas in the house a light gray, so I'd like some other bedroom color.  It needs to complement our bedding, which is blue.  The bedroom walls in our last rental were a light blue--we really liked the color, but I thought it was a little much with the bedding.  So, blue and gray are out.  We'd like a relatively light color, to keep the room nice and bright.  And one final note: these walls have been painted many times over the years, and have a lot of roller texture built up.  But now certain patches of the walls are nice and smooth where P spackled them.  So whatever color paint we chose, we'll be using the flat finish, so as not to draw attention to the variety of wall textures.

I first selected two taupes, with pink/gray undertones.  (I don't like taupes and beiges with yellow undertones.)  I decided to test two Benjamin Moore colors, Featherstone and Mocha Cream, to decide whether we preferred a darker or lighter wall color.

I was quite excited about these colors, until I painted the swatches on the walls.  Definitely not what we were thinking.  The Featherstone was far too pink, and the Mocha Cream was too dark, and not pink enough.  I pulled my fan deck of paint colors back out, and quickly decided that if we didn't like these two colors, there was a good chance we weren't going to like anything in a taupe.

Back to the drawing board.  I decided it was time to get over my irrational fear of painting a room green.  Somehow, I'm convinced that if I paint a room green, it will either be too yellow, or it will look like my grandparent's living room.  But I was inspired by some swatches in the Freshaire paint line (particularly a color called Hidden Sea Glass), and decided to give green a try. 

I rolled up to the Home Depot paint counter, and asked the paint guy to mix up the Freshaire color in a Behr brand sample size.  The paint guy declined, explaining that for reasons unknown to him, the Freshaire colors never looked right in any other brand. 

Maybe this was a sign that I should try some zero-VOC paint.  I asked him to mix me up a Freshaire sample, then.  Nope.  Freshaire doesn't come in sample sizes.  Given my love (and Consumer Report's love) of Behr and my poor track record of choosing paint colors, I thought committing to a quart was a bad idea.  So I took my swatch and compared it to all the other swatches Home Depot had, and decided that Behr's Whitened Sage was a pretty close match.  For good measure, I grabbed a similar, but slightly darker, color as well, Sliced Cucumber.

Hmm.  Those don't seem quite right either.  Whitened Sage looks a little too yellow on the walls, and Sliced Cucumber is far too dark, and in my mind, almost verges on olive tones.

I'm not quite ready to give up on greens--the Whitened Sage is the best of the failed choices.  So, next I'll to find something that is green, but has bluer undertones without being too blue, nor too bright and aqua.  (We're going for really subtle and peaceful in this room--aqua would be a pretty good choice for the back bedroom, my office, next door.)  Maybe Spring Melt, in the new Martha Stewart for Home Depot line?

Hosting guests while renovating

My grandparents are at my cousin S's college graduation today.  (We're so proud of you, S!)  Our house is roughly halfway between my where my grandparents live and S's college, so they were able to break their trip at our place, and spend two nights with us.

We've been looking forward to their visit for several weeks now, but we aren't nearly as far along with our renovations as we had hoped.  Instead of having a lovely guest room, most of our furniture and belongings are still in storage.  P and I have been talking for months about getting ourselves a new mattress and setting ours up in the guest room (so we actually have a guest bed), but we can't agree on how soft/firm we would like it to be.  He wants to solve this problem with a SleepNumber bed--he slept on one in a hotel once, and loved it.  I'm not thrilled about how expensive they are.  They adjust firmness by inflating or deflating a series of airbladders, and I just can't believe that design is really durable.  Then again, I haven't heard anyone complain about their SleepNumber mattress not lasting as long as they would like, so maybe I should just get over that one.  So, back to the part where it's really expensive.

Does anyone know of a manufacturer that sells a queen bed where you can get one side firmer than the other?  We've only been able to find that option with a king bed (or a DIY king by putting two twins together), and I'm not sure we want anything that large.

But I digress.  I was supposed to be talking about my grandparents.  Luckily, they're fantastically good sports, and are up for nearly anything.  They also remember what it's like to be where we are.  Fifteen years ago, they began building a new house for their retirement.  But they were concerned about whether they would be able to sell their previous house.  The real estate market was quite slow there; several other houses on their street were listed for sale, and some had been on the market for as long as two years.  So they listed their house for sale several months before the new one was scheduled to be completed--and of course, it sold in less than a week.  They put all their belongings into storage, and spent the next few months living first with my uncle's family, and then in my family's guest room.  So they can definitely relate to our current situation.

P and I have been sleeping on a mattress laid directly on the floor, while the frame and box spring are in storage.  So we dragged the mattress into our smallest bedroom, and proudly surveyed our new guest room:  the mattress laying on our newly refinished hardwoods, and a neatly folded pile of clean towels for our guests.  We'll call it the minimalist look: no bedside table, no lamp, no clock.  But the floors!  They were beautiful!  And our guests would be in such close proximity to them, with no box spring or rug to interfere!  Pretty good deal, right?

Next up was making the hall bath inhabitable for the guests.  The most important order of business was rehanging the door that I had taken off the hinges to paint.  (Who wants to use a bathroom with no door?)  So the newly painted, crisp white door was rehung in the still cream colored door frame.  Then, to clean: I removed the bits of stripped wallpaper from every surface, chipped stray bits of spackle off of the countertop and out of the bathtub, and wiped construction dust off of everywhere.  Finally, I got nice and thoughtful, and put soap, shampoo, and conditioner in the shower, a dispenser of hand soap on the counter, and a throw rug on the floor.

I was really quite pleased with myself for cleaning the place up, and P was quite impressed with how good it looked when he got home.  Want a peak?

Yeah, it's all about perspective, isn't it?

As I said, my grandparents are great sports, and didn't complain a bit about anything.  Though my grandfather did get stuck in the bathroom, as I had neglected to put the new doorknob on the door, so you need a screwdriver or other implement to open the latch once it had closed.  (As soon as I freed him, he put the new knob on for me.)  And after quietly observing the situation for 24 hours, they politely asked if I would mind if they took the full-length mirror that was laying on my "to junk" pile outside and propped it up in their room, so they would be able to comb their hair the second morning.  My grandparents are pretty good problem solvers!

We had a great time on their visit--it was a great excuse for us to see some of the local attractions and try out a new restaurant--all things P and I had been meaning to do, but hadn't made the time for until we had guests.

And we have several more guests coming soon!  So thanks for breaking us in (and getting that doorknob on the bathroom), Grammy and Pa!

Curtain fabric!

I've been having a hard time figuring out what color I want to paint the bedroom that will serve as my office/craft room.  I want something bright and energizing, but that will still work with the rest of the house. 

Since I was being indecisive while staring at the paint swatches, I thought that perhaps the way to make a decision would be to first select the fabric I'll use to make the curtains, and then work backwards from there to the paint color.  Again, I'm thinking something punchy, bright, large print....  But I hadn't been making much headway with that approach, either--I wasn't able to find a fabric I liked at a good price, nor one that was so perfect that I didn't mind paying an arm and a leg.

Then, a member of the new modern quilting group that I'm a part of sent us a link to Pink Chalk Fabric's Anniversary Sale.  They have some really great fabrics at some fantastic prices.  I was tempted by a number of their options:

I finally decided on this one, an Amy Butler in the Nigella home decor fabric line. At $5.99 for a 54" wide decor weight designer fabric (normally $14.95), it's a great deal! (Plus, by using a 54" wide fabric, I'll be able to get two curtain panels out a of width of fabric. I'd only be able to get one out of a 44" width--that's a big cost savings, and one of the major reasons I chose this one.)

Go check out Pink Chalk Fabric--they have some great deals through May 17, but they only have several yards of each fabric, so they're selling out quick!  And I bought the entire stock of this one.  :-)

Once the fabric arrives, I'll pull out my deck of paint chips and think about what color to paint the room.  Maybe a light turquoise, a few shades lighter than the leaves, or a light green, as in the swirl in the flower petals?

Research

Between P and I, we have 3 bachelors degrees, 3 masters, and 2 Ph.D.s.  By both temperament and training, we like to thoroughly research any project before beginning. 

We bought a few books on wood floors, and checked out several more from the public library.  Our hands-down favorite was Charles Peterson's Wood Flooring: A Complete Guide to Layout, Installation, and Finishing (Taunton Press, 2010).  The book is only available in hardcover, and costs $30, but we considered that a good investment for this project.  If everything went right, refinishing the floors would cost us several hundred dollars.  If we made a mistake and had to undo or redo a step, it would cost far more than the $30 book.  Plus, our time is valuable, and a tip that saves us an hour or two is definitely worth $30.  Finally, we want the floors to come out looking really good, and to be as durable as possible, so that we don't have to refinish the floors again for many years to come (as that's quite costly in terms of both time and money invested).

(Image courtesy Taunton Press)

Perhaps all of this is to say that we really like to buy books, and it's a habit we're really good at rationalizing.  (You'll see much more of this habit when I start discussing decorating challenges.)

Wood Flooring is (so far as we can determine) both the newest and most authoritative text on the subject.  New is important--flooring technology has changed significantly in the last ten or fifteen years.  More products are available than ever before and product quality shifts over time.  We now understand the health hazards involved in working with certain finishes far better than we did before.

Wood Flooring, like most Taunton publications, is not the easiest text for the complete novice to pick up.  The author assumes that you will understand some amount of technical language on tools and finishes.  Taunton publications also assume an audience with perfectionist tendencies: they're aimed at people who want to invest significant time (and money in tools) to get the best possible outcome.  But if you really want to do a good job, it's hard to beat Taunton as a guide.