Our floors are done!

We rolled on our second and third coats of floor paint this weekend, and we. are. done! Here’s how they look now:

So shiny! It’s hard to believe they used to look like this:

We’ve gotten a lot of emails & comments from people who are in the same boat — they were expecting hardwood floors and got ugly, old soft pine flooring instead. Our first word of advice: don’t panic! There’s hope. We’re going to share all the details of how we got our floors from gross-&-grungy to gorgeous. Remember that this is just what worked for us. It may or may not work the same for you.

It all starts with the right paint. Home Depot, Lowe’s and Cole’s (a local chain) suggested an oil-based primer followed by 3 coats of heavy-duty latex. The paint department employees at each of the 3 stores insisted that latex has come a long way and that the special (aka very expensive) floor paints are super durable. We were pretty skeptical, but decided to give it a show. We got a gallon of the recommended Benjamin Moore primer and paint to test out. Long story short: it sucked. And at $50 per can, that was an expensive lesson to learn. We’re still bitter.

So we decided to talk to a paint specialist instead. We went to a company in Brooklyn that sells only professional-grade paints, stains and other finishing products. These guys know their stuff. Here’s what they told us about painting soft pine floors:

• Never, ever use latex on floors. Ever.
  Oil-based paints are much more durable.
• Make sure the floors are squeaky clean before painting.
  We vacuumed twice, then used wet rags to scrub the floors. We tried using tack cloths, but they missed a lot of dust, left residue on the floors and made our fingers feel sticky. Wet rags worked just fine.
• We want the paint to soak into the wood, not sit on top of the wood. Sooo…
  
  • Sand the floors really well to make them as porous as possible.
    You can read about our floor-sanding adventure here.
  • Don’t use a primer.
    Yup. This totally goes against everything we’ve ever been told about painting. But we want the color to soak into the wood — not the primer.
  • Thin out your first coat for maximum soakage.
    Mix paint thinner into your oil-based paint to make it really runny. We did a ratio of 1/3 parts paint thinner to 2/3 paint and our first coat was very watery. Be careful not to splatter it on the walls. We have a little touch up to do in the guest bedroom from our overzealous rolling.
• Roll a paper-thin coat.
  This is a general rule for painting, but it’s extra important when painting floors. We don’t want any clumps or globs because they might peel up later. Our first coat was so thin, we were worried we that we thinned it out too much. That’s how we knew we were doing it right.
• Lightly scuff the surface in between coats.
  Don’t skip this step. It’s tedious and boring, but necessary. Glossy paint doesn’t stick to other glossy surfaces. Scuffing up the surface gives us a nice, rough surface for the paint to stick to. We used 320-grit sandpaper and an orbital sander.
• Second and third coats: use full-strength oil-based paint.
  Again, roll paper-thin coats and scuff up the surface in between coats. Depending on the paint and the floors, more coats might be necessary. Just keep scuffing and keep painting until the floors are covered.

Our paint guy also gave us a little insight about why you shouldn’t buy your floor paint at general hardware stores. The VOC content of oil-based paint is much higher than latex, and a lot of people are buying low-VOC paints these days. Hardware stores stock up on whatever is selling, so you might have to go to a specialty store to get a durable paint.

We picked up a 5-gallon bucket of glossy black oil-based for about $90. Compared to the $50-a-gallon Ben Moore latex paint, this is a serious bargain.

Time to get to work:

We used a paint mixer attachment for our drill to give the bucket a good mix. The attachment is metal so it’s reusable, and it costs about $8. After that, we poured a little paint into our rolling pan, added paint thinner, and gave it another whirl. Then we rolled it on.

Here’s how our first coat looked after it dried:

Not bad! It wasn’t textured at all and looked more like a stain than a paint.

We let the first coat dry for a full 2 weeks. This is definitely not a requirement, but we thought it might help the floors harden up a little more. Oil-based paints can take 3-4 weeks to reach full-strength. And, sure enough, after 2 weeks of curing, our floors were feeling way better. We tried scratching up the paint in the closet and in areas that will be covered with trim — it didn’t budge.

We also stomped around on the floors in sneakers and work boots to see how the floors held up.

We managed to make them super dirty, but the paint stayed put.

Next step: scuffing.

Not gonna lie: we panicked a little when we saw how much paint we scuffed off. The floors went from a glossy black to a very dull grey. And then we remembered that we have at least 2 more coats to throw down.

We vacuumed the floors and cleaned them with wet rags:

Then we rolled on the second coat:

This is where we started seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. The second coat rolled much more saturated than the first. We wanted a pure black — not a blue-black, but a black-black — and this paint did not disappoint. We were especially excited about painting the guest bedroom:

Those are the “old” floors and are in much rougher shape than the office floors.

With the second coat of paint, they were looking every bit as slick as the office flooring. Check out how the hallway looks with the black door at the end:

We were worried it would end up being too much black and the hallway would look really dark. The soft grey walls help keep things light, and we think the black floors and black doors look really old-school and sophisticated.

We let the second coat dry for 24 hours. This is how the guest bedroom looked the next morning:

And the office:

The floors were super glossy:

We think it adds a lot of dimension to the rooms. It also makes us want to hang our curtains, because we keep getting blinded by sunlight reflecting off the floors.

The best part is that the old floors still look like old floors. You can see cracks, imperfections and wood grain:

They have all the character you’d expect from 130-year-old floors without all the cracking, peeling and staining. You’ll never see that in new hardwood floors. So all you folks who emailed us about finding soft pine floors — embrace ‘em! They’ll make your house look and feel so much more unique.

We scuffed, vacuumed and mopped one more time, and then rolled on coat #3:

We’re going to let the final coat dry for at least a week before we go upstairs. And we’ll wait 3 weeks before we move any furniture upstairs.

A lot of people have warned us that black floors require constant cleaning, but we’re OK with that. We plan on throwing down some rugs, which will help. We also tend to hang out in socks or flip flops when we’re at home, so shoe grime isn’t a huge issue. We’ll just keep vacuuming and mopping like normal and deal with dusty footprints as they come.

And now for our favorite part of the whole project — the part where we realize how much money we saved!

Cost breakdown for painting our floors:

• 24-hour sander rental + sanding pads = $307.35
• 5 gallons of paint = $90 (we used less than half of the bucket, so we’ll count it as $45)
• Sanding discs for orbital sander = $20
• Paint rollers = $8

Grand total for 2 rooms + hallway = $380.35
Cost of buying hardwood flooring for 2 rooms + hallway = $3000
What we saved = $2619.65!

We’re seriously considering going to a bank to take out $2619.65 in pennies. Then we could fill up a room and swim around in money like Scrooge McDuck.

We should also mention that the estimated $3000 was for the absolute cheapest wood flooring we could find at Lumber Liquidators. And it doesn’t include tax. The total cost for buying wood floors for the entire house? $15,000. No thanks!

A few people have pointed out that we could have gone with an “engineered wood” flooring, but we’re not fans. No matter what HGTV says, fake wood floors never look or feel like the real thing to us. Either way, we’re guessing they would have cost more than 380 beans!

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What we learned from our floor painting adventure:

• This could take a while.
  Painting floors — the right way — is a long process. Don’t go into it thinking it’s a quickie weekend project. It’ll end in tears. Speaking of tears…
• Get knee pads.
  They sell them at Home Depot in the same aisle as the the sanding pads….and now we know why. We’ve spent a lot of time on our knees the past few weekends. From scuffing the floors to scrubbing them clean, there was a lot of crawling going on. And, hoo boy, we are definitely feeling it now. So far, we’ve painting only about 1/4 of our entire house. We’ll be investing in some heavy-duty knee pads before we paint any more floors.
• Oil-based paints will stank up your house.
  Obviously this means you should wear a respirator while you paint. But it might also mean not staying in your house while the fumes clear up. We’re pretty lucky because we can hole up in the living room downstairs. We leave the doors closed all the time, so we never smell fumes in there. We also don’t have any bambinos running around to worry about. And, best of all, we leave for Brooklyn the day after we paint. By the time we get back, the fumes aren’t nearly as bad.
• Floor paint isn’t forever.
  While we love the look of our painted floors, we know this isn’t a permanent solution. We’re hoping to buy ourselves 5 years of use out of them.  After that, if we have the funds, we’ll revisit the idea of installing hardwood floors. Or we could just sand and paint them all over again. We love the flexibility!

Everything we need to know about home renovation, we learned from Mr. Miyagi.

Bradley and I are total children of the ’80s, which means two things: 1) we grew up with some very embarrassing haircuts, and 2) Mr. Miyagi was a god. So when it came time to sand our floors, we cued up this YouTube clip and took notes:

Sanding floors, painting houses, defending against attacks from those dastardly Cobra Kai — home renovation is serious business. Now if only we could find a teenage boy we could con into renovating the house for us…

On Saturday morning, we marched on over to the Home Depot tool rental department and came back home with this puppy:

We had the option between a heavy-duty belt sander and a disc sander. We went with the disc sander. According to our Home Depot guy, the belt sander gets a better finish, but it’s harder to use. There was a definite potential of shaving too much off if we didn’t know what we were doing. We’ve never actually sanded floors before so we decided to play it safe. The disc sander still gets a nice finish and it’s way more user-friendly.

The Home Depot guy gave us a quick rundown on the proper way to use the machine. Here’s the right way:

Wear a respirator. Keep the sander close to your body so you can use your body weight to steer it. Keep the cord out of the sander’s way, and keep both hands on the handles at all times.

Here are some wrong ways to use a sander:

1. Do not ride the sander.

2. Do not Superman on the sander.

3. Do not surf on the sander.

4. Do not read a magazine while sanding.

5. Do not let pugs sand your floor. Not without a proper pug sander attachment, anyway.

And most importantly:

6. Do not attempt to sand your floors with anything other than a sander.

Now that we have that cleared up, it’s time to get on with the sanding. We started with a quick check to remove any staples or nails we might have missed:

Then we loaded up the sander with fresh 36-grit sandpaper:

The lowdown on sandpaper:

• The lower the number, the rougher the paper.
• The higher the number, the less gritty, so really high numbers will smooth and polish.
• You can’t jump from a really gritty sandpaper to a really smooth sandpaper. You have to work your way up gradually to get a really even surface. So start with a lower-grit sandpaper, then go a little higher, then a little higher, and finish off with a high-grit sandpaper.

We started with 36-grit, then re-sanded with 40-grit, 80-grit and ended with a 120-grit. That means we had to sand each room 4 times total. And we had to do it in 24 hours. It sounds like a lot of work, but we were up for the challenge. After living with our crusty old floors for 5 months, we were feeling downright giddy:

We flipped the on switch and let ‘er rip:

We had at least 2 layers of paint to strip, but the 35-grit sandpaper ate right through it. We were initially a little nervous about getting too close to the walls, but the disc sander was great for getting right up to the edge:

The sandpaper is underneath the machine, so it didn’t hit our wall at all. We had to replace our sanding discs pretty frequently because the the paint gummed things up:

This isn’t something we planned for, so just a few hours after bringing the sander home, we were on our last set of discs. Oops! Bradley handed over the sander to me while he ran to Home Depot to get more. I was sweating bullets all day because I knew eventually I would have to SAND THE FLOOR! and I wasn’t sure I could do it.

The sander is big. And loud. I had visions of tripping and falling in front of it, and the 35-grit sandpaper eating up my face. Or worse — what if I lost control and the sander crashed through a wall? Or if I got stuck in one spot and it ate a hole through the floor? What if the “off” switch broke and I had to sand and sand forever?

I obviously watched too many sitcoms growing up because stuff like that only happens on TV. At the time, though, it all seemed very likely. But we only had 24 hours with our sander and I had no choice but to get over it. I took a deep breath, grabbed the handles, flipped the switch and started sanding. The verdict? It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It was sort of like using a vacuum cleaner. A really big, heavy vacuum cleaner that vibrates and shakes the entire room. OK, fine, it wasn’t like using a vacuum cleaner at all. But it wasn’t horrifying. I still have a face and our floors are intact. So I call that a success.

We vacuumed after each round of sanding to check out our progress. The sander actually doesn’t kick up dust into the air at all, but it does leave some dust behind on the floor.  Here’s how the guest bedroom looked after 40-grit:

Smooooth! When we first removed the carpet, we were so disappointed to find soft pine planks instead of a gorgeous hardwood, but the floors have really grown on us.

After the guest bedroom, we headed over to the office. This room was more of a challenge than the guest bedroom because it has hard pine flooring instead of soft pine. They’re harder to sand. There was also glue under the carpets, and those patches needed some serious work to sand off:

There was also this beast to deal with:

That radiator easily weighs 400 pounds. It’s massive. We thought we could just put it on the dolly and wheel it around, but that left gashes in the wood. To sand around it, we had to pick it up and waddle it over to the other side of the room. We went back and forth with it for 4 rounds of sanding. Still surprised neither of us ended up with a hernia from that.

Here’s how the office looked after sanding:

It was already dark by the time we finished, so we got to test out our new recessed lightbulbs:

It took us 3 trips to the hardware stores, but we finally found bulbs that sit really far back in the can and cast a nice light. The others all either sat out too far or looked too blue, so we returned them. We’re loving how the lighting adds instant drama to the room:

The little space right outside the office didn’t sand so well:

We went over it for what seemed like forever, but the paint never quite came off. We’re not sure if it’s just soaked really deeply into the wood, but we scuffed it so much that our paint will definitely stick to it.

By the time we finished all 4 rounds of sanding in the office and guest bedroom, it was 8PM. We still had the hallway to do, but we also didn’t want to piss off our neighbors. I did a quick check to see how loud we were being by running out to the yard and standing right in front of the fence that divides our property from our neighbor’s. Inside the house, it sounded like a tornado was happening upstairs. Outside, it was barely a hum. I had to strain to hear it. Looks like all our insulation and new windows helped soundproof the place as well as keep it warm!

We decided to keep going and finish up the hallway before going to bed:

We’d been sanding for over 9 hours by the time we finished, and we were wiped out. We didn’t bother cleaning up after we finished. On Sunday morning, we went back up to vacuum and take some daylight pictures:

And then we decided to go ahead and sand the dining room floors. Bradley spent part of Saturday prepping the room while I sanded. We weren’t sure whether we’d have time for the dining room, but we wanted to be ready just in case. Good thing, too, because we had 4 hours still left on the clock and that gave us plenty of time. Here’s what they looked like before Bradley prepped the room:

And here’s how they look now:

You can also take a peek at the afters in the “no” pictures above. My favorite:

I love the look on Jabba’s face in that one. Don’t feel sorry for her, peeps. That dog loves our shenanigans.

Coming up next:

We’re painting our floors! I’d better go brush up on Mr. Miyagi’s recommendations. Is it side-to-side? Or up-down? I forget. We’ll be back with more updates, so stay tuned.

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What we learned from our floor-sanding adventure:

• Give yourself plenty of time.
  Our Home Depot offers a 4-hour rental and a 24-hour rental. The 4-hour rental is $20 cheaper, but we’re pretty sure we couldn’t finish up even one room in that amount of time.
• Buy more than you need.
  We could have saved an emergency trip to Home Depot by stocking up and then returning all the unopened packs for a refund when we took the sander back. Luckily there are 2 of us here, so 1 person could sand while the other ran to Home Depot. And that brings us to the most important lesson we learned…
• It takes two.
  Having 2 people around was a major help in getting 3 rooms and a hallway sanded in less than 24 hours. One person could sand while the other prepped the next room. We also traded off sanding duties every couple of hours. That way our arms could rest up in between sanding sessions, but we still plugged along at the same pace. Plus, the sander was crazy-heavy. It definitely takes 2 people to haul that thing up and down stairs. Partner up, people! Now show me….SAND THE FLOOR!