Friday night we moved out the furniture and tore up the carpet. We found some adhesive looking stuff under the padding, but figured it would come up with the sander. Sanders get everything, right? (that's what they call foreshadowing, ladies and gents)
Saturday morning, it was straight to Home Depot to set about renting the orbital sander. What a beast that thing is! Not that I would know much about it, as Dan did all the heavy lifting and all the sanding with it. But it looked intense. After a few passes, we started to become concerned since we weren't seeing much progress and the sand paper pads were caked in brown gunk.
This is after like 4 passes or so. Very little progress.
See the gunk?Back to Home Depot we go, only to find out that there is most likely a wax build up along with the adhesive and the heat from the sander is causing both to melt and stick to the pads. Best bet is to keep sanding, according to the talkative and informative Home Depot employee.
After a few more passes, we really started to see some progress... but was it going to be enough to make the floors in this room match the floors in the rest of the house? No time on Saturday to find out. I think we called it quits and went out to the porch to share a few beers around 10:30.
Finally!Sunday was a jam packed day in the Lehigh Valley, so nothing even got started until 10pm. At that point, I remembered some school work and left Dan to do some hand sanding while I finished that up.
Monday is when it really got interesting... It was time to clean it all up and get to the polyurethane. This was the test. Fingers crossed that a couple of coats of poly and we'd be done. Thankfully, it worked out beautifully, and Dan and I couldn't be happier with the results!
After coat 1. Looking good.
Super wet shot of coat 2.
Dry coat later Monday night.
We still need to get the base trim and put the radiator cover back in and the doors back on, but we are pretty satisfied. The floors were still a little tacky when I took the above photos, so I wasn't able to get a shot of where the bedroom meets the hallway, but, trust me, they could not be closer!
