As luck would have it, the Monday following the Thursday the tree fiasco was scheduled to begin a week of vacation for us.  I was lucky enough to be able to take Friday as an additional day off (thanks Boss!) and deal with the tree situation.  Dennis had to go to work in the morning, but was able to come home at noon.  I stood outside in the rain – from misting to driving pruning branches off the pine and pear trees and dragging them to the corner. 
I really just wanted to get to the newly planted area and try to salvage what I could, but it was impossible to get there directly.  I had to work my way up.  By the time Dennis got home, most of the branches were cut away and he took the chain saw to the trunks.

 

He cleared the trees off the newly planted area.  It didn’t look good.  But most looked like they at least survived.

 

Just about that time, a tree crew came by, and began clearing those trees out and sending them into a huge wood chipper.  The town we live in is nice enough to have tree services on retainer and they come by after big wind storms (usually a couple a year) and clean things up.

 

 

So, by Friday, we were pretty well cleaned up, the outside of the house looked naked and unbalanced, and the plants look salvageable.

 

So, what to do after a long day in the rain hauling a 75+ year old tree?  VACATION!  And what’s a nice and relaxing thing to do during vacation?  Refinish your floors, of course.

 

We decided to do the living room and family room floors.  They are nice oak set in an interesting pattern.  The dining room is the same and had been refinished by the POs about 4 years ago.

 

The wood was in great shape, no damage.  There was still a lot of shellac on the floor.  The real problem was that at some point, the carpet pad had reconstituted and redistributed the shellac and we had a waffle effect in some areas on the floor.  And then, the finish was generally dull and needed a kick in the hiney.

 

 

Living Room Floor

 

So, refinish we would.  We’d done it before.  Not so much.

 

We rented the sander (a story that may be related later) and went to it.  We started with the family room floor.  It didn’t take long to see that there was just too much shellac left on the floor.  We didn’t have enough money to buy the amount of sandpaper that would be required to get down to bare wood.  Dennis (and I) struggled with the sander.  At some point, I moved into the living room with a sponge, paper towels and a gallon of denatured alcohol.  I poured, I rubbed, I sopped up.  Clean as a whistle.  Oh crap!

I’d done this before, on the stairs to remove the old shellac.  I had a headache for days afterward, and my short term memory was suspect.

 

I know, I know, there are respirators for just this type thing.  But on a hot, humid Ohio day, that’s not happening.

 

So, I began to strip the living room floor.  After that, we stripped the family room floor.  Then we sanded.  We did not have any unfortunate splinter episodes, so that was good.

 

We tried putting a coat of amber shellac on the floor.  The results were not as good as we had hopped and so we decided that we would just apply the urethane (love that Zip-Guard).

 

The floor took the urethane great, dried fast.  Three coats, and then, wait.  The color deepened with each coat and ended a nice honey color for the lighter wood and a golden brown for the darker boards.

 

Photos of the rooms with furniture coming soon.

 

 

 

Living Room

 

 

Family Room