Enjoying the Living Room

We have finally reached the point where we can once again enjoy our living room space. It was a lot of work but we pulled it off. First, I had to fill all the cracks in the wood (note to anyone attempting their floors themselves - do this step before the initial sanding!). It took six tubes and three 32 oz. tubs of wood putty to fill all the cracks.

 

The next step was to mop up the excess. And mop. And mop. And mop some more. It took a lot of mopping to get the floors relatively clean. I say relatively because there always seemed to be a bit of dusty residue after the floors dried.

After letting the wood putty cure for a few days, I had to get ready to literally paint the cracks with stain. I stole one of the kids' paintbrushes to do this step as the fattest one was the perfect size for those filled cracks.

 

Here is what a section looks like once it has been "painted" with the stain. Again, you can see that our old floors had a lot of cracks.

The final step was to buff the floor with a microfiber cloth to remove any excess stain and to see if I missed any spots. They were pretty easy to spot due to the major variance in color!

After a few days to allow the stain to cure and dry really well, I had to sand the floors with 1000 grit sandpaper...again. And put on two coats of polyurethane. This time we used a high gloss finish. My husband loves the final look because the floor looks "wet;" I hate it. You can see every dimple and roller mark. The semi-gloss finish left a nice, dull smooth finish that looked much better in my opinion. Alas, I am stuck with shiny imperfect floors. I am planning on doing some more research on applying the high gloss finish so that the other floors finish up more smoothly.

We also applied a second coat of stain to the board and batten wainscoting that we had installed. It is now a much darker, richer color that better matches the coloring of the floor. Those also got a coat of polyurethane to make them easy to clean. And the same was done for the two window frames.

Finally, we painted the two walls Champlain Blue. I was able to find an 8' x 10' area rug that had the blue of the walls, the beige of the couch, the dark brown of the recliner, and the yellow from my overstuffed chair. With some new curtain rods installed and natural, light blocking drapes, the rooms has been reassembled.

We are not finished yet as we still have to install the built-in bookcases and we also have to finish the ceiling and install crown molding; but at least the room is a usable space once again and we are enjoying it quite a lot. This is what it looks like today!