Thanks, its a shame to bury such lovely real wood, there was tar paper, congenolium, 1/4 plywood, crappy flooring, more plywood and linoleum, about 3/4 inch of stuff keeping it hidden. The asphalt in the tar paper mixed with some of the pine sap in the knots and gave the knots a few black overtones and extra hilites.

Indeed, and bonus, wife got to return the engineered wide plank flooring! Thank you very much for the kind words as well my friend.

Wood floors are definitely the way to go.

I will say the engineered 'pergo' type flooring is super tough and there's not a lot of uniformity to the grain patterns that it almost looks real. But underfoot, there is a huge thermal difference, the wood feels warm, the engineered flooring feels cold.

Hi Panzier,
Good job on the kitchen floor. It looks very good. Too bad pine is so soft and prone for scratches and dinks. I hope the floor will last a long time for you. Perhaps with pine being soft, it could be comfortable for your hind paws.
Cheers,
---> Wally

Thanks Wally, the scratches and defects give the floor character, the chairs have little wooly foot pads so actually any damage is very slight, The wide pine with the gaps, knots and defects has a look beyond compare.

I think the first time I did it, the finish was much more glossy (for the less than high gloss finishes, all the dulling agents fall to the bottom of the can) but this time its a semi-gloss, I like it just as well.

I sure do love me some polished wood XD

Looks great! Love the wide planks

Something to be said for houses built with real lumber and a floor that was meant to be covered up, in the days long ago, poor people had wood and fancy folks had Linoleum, now its the other way round.

Who wood have known?

Looks great!

Thanks, its actually pretty easy to upkeep.

Very nice. It's hyena approved.

Thanks!

would it have just been easier to push the building over?

it almost happened with the big excavator, swung a little too fast while handling a 30,000 pound boulder,

Floor looks great! Did you use water based or oil based?
Water based urethane and I are not on speaking terms anymore. Did some hollow core doors and the finish left me feeling just as hollow inside.

I'll say for floors and stuff like the 'outdoor table' oil based urethane is the way to go, afterall it is a true varnish and does both the solvent evaporation and then the oxygen/polymer cross chain linking that happens as it 'cures' and hardens over 30-90 days. Now for interior furniture, Graham ceramithane is the way go to, or stuff by Sikkens is also good, the HD and box store stuff doesn't seem to perform very well. You need to find a paint store for the good crap.

I re-did my IKEA countertops in tung oil this summer. Sanded all the old stuff off and started over. Probably 10 coats, one in the morning and one in the evening on average over the course of a week. So I'm a glutton for punishment. It came out pretty good. For a food prep surface I couldn't beat the look and durability of the tung oil. The old finish was put on thick and it lasted almost six years.

Coworker gave me a gallon of sikkens that was mixed to the wrong color and I was gonna do the deck at the old house if the pressure washer got it clean enough. It didn't, I need the gas powered one. The electric one is better than none at all but not by much.

Ive had ok luck with older minwax oil based but all the water based stuff I've tried recently hates me and I won't use it again. Just did some pine for the sideboard and after four coats of water based I gave up. It was almost good enough but it would not wet out and flow and the edges came out dry because the brush put it on too thin. Or rather my shoddy brush work fell apart at the edges. The hollow core doors were done with a foam roller and they looked like poop. Next time I'll think about loading up the touch up gun and spraying the oil based. If I want it to look nice.

But your floors look great - I agree the wood feels way warmer than the laminate at the old house. Cat hair tumbleweeds are a constant menace however.

well, I will agree with you, I used the minwax water based, blue can, it was suck on wheels, I think I put 8 or 10 coats on a small cabinet top and was unable to get the finish I desired. I redid the kitchen table with the Graham product after the girls had a drunken fingernail painting party including an acetone spill. It was comparable to a thinned oil based urethane finish. The minwax product was more like a slightly water damp paper towel rubbing over the surface with no lasting effect.

I'll check out the Graham stuff, thanks for the tip. I'm done with the blue can urethane. Also avoid the water based stain from minwax. It's not really stain it truly is a runny, shoddy excuse for paint. You wipe it on and then wipe it off. If you steel wool the surface the color comes right off again. I don't know how they get away with calling it a stain, it's a shitty translucent paint. Plus the water based stuff is expensive and works poorly - what a bargain.

Today's adventure: heat pump water heater I got off eBay for $365 shipped. It's a dehumidifier too so for my musty basement a win-win. I have 20 more days to test it out so I gotta make sure it runs before my 30 day warranty is up. Check it out, kinda neat. You wire it up in place of the lower element on a conventional tank water heater and it has its own Taco circ pump.

http://m.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Heat-Pump.....754?nav=SEARCH

Looks pretty bitchin, what happens when your basement gets really damned cold in the winter?

The Heat pump shuts down when it goes below 45 so you fall back to resistive element heating. My furnace probably leaks enough air in there to keep it warm enough to make hot water. I have a temp and humidity peak meter in there and it averages around 61F now but we will see how it does in Feb. should work great in the summer when the dehumidifier is cranking away like crazy. Saw a person online who ducted the air intake to the back of their fridge so it collects the waste heat from the fridge to heat the water. Might be possible here but I don't know if it is worth the effort of putting a big hole in the floor. Although who's gonna see it back there?

Helped my neighbor with a whole house geothermal, now that right there is a snazzy device.

It looks wonderful! I'm trying to make my wood floors look decent again because I just got done renovating the kitchen a month or so a go. Plus there's a bullet hole in the floor from my brother... Any idea on how to hide that hole and to get the floors to shine again.

A bullet hole? woot, what caliber though, pencil sized or bigger? maybe .22 ? Also what type of wood is the floor made from, do you know if its pine, oak, maple? do you have a close up picture of the hole? If its say straight down mostly and is a hole punched in the wood you can find or make a plug from a similar type of wood, drill the hole to an even plug size , here is a 1 inch plug from red oak.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_151441-1487.....37517&pl=1

but there are lots of other sources, so like fixing a tire injury, drill it out slowly to make an even hole using a sharp bit like a forstner type bit though a paddle bit can work if it has the sharp fangs on the outer edge. for any non self centering bit, you'd have to drill a hole in a block of scrap wood, align the drilled hole over the existing hole and stand on it, using the scrap as the drill bit guide. Artistry comes in making the hole a fraction smaller than the plug, sanding the plug flush and staining it to match where needed.

After a refinish you'll still be able to find the plug likely but it should be difficult because wood isn't a perfect surface.

post pictures too!

I was just thinking about this last night! I'll get a picture in a few! (making my boys , brother and husband, dinner)

Excellent, looking forward to it!

Oh man its beautiful! My father was in floor covering for 30 years and I went to work with him every summer so I can definitely say with a bit of expertise that you have a beautiful wood floor

Yes, it was a delight to find a good wood floor beneath linoleum/plywood/linoleum/plywood/congenolium/tar paper layers.