Restoring The Floorboards - Before and After

I've given a tutorial on restoring the floorboards in the house before but the kitchen/dining room floorboard restoration was a bit different because there was a lot more work involved in this room and the floors had to be a gradual process that happened over time in working with the rest of the renovation.

The floors weren't just filled, sanded and sealed, it was also our first time at having to patch holes in the floorboards from when we removed the pantry wall and window.

And the end result?

They came up a million bucks!

So to start in the kitchen/dining room we spent about 6 hours filling the gaps between each and every floorboard with filler.

This is so it's easier to sweep and keep clean and no draughts or breeze come up through the floorboards.

Then any nails or rough bits are smoothed off so they don't damage the sanding paper.

The holes in the floorboards were patched - we repaired the hole left by the brick pantry wall being removed with spare pantry shelves, ironically made from the jarrah floorboards themselves, how lucky a find is that!

The boards around the new door way also had to be patched and skirting installed.

Again we managed to be thrifty here and reuse some jarrah from one of the wardrobes we ripped out.

The boards were sanded back bare which took about 4 hours before the new kitchen was installed.

We use Feast Watson Tung Oil on all the floorboards. We applied oil around the edge of the room where we had marked out where the kitchen cabinets would go so the floorboards would be sealed underneath the cabinets. We knew there was no point in sealing the entire floor now because it was going to get scratched up and marked with all the demolition, installation and plumbing work to be done in this room.

Sure enough, once the new kitchen was in place, the plumbing and electrics in, painting was done, and there wasn't going to be anymore work in the kitchen/dining room THEN we did a final sand back of the floors to remove any scratches and marks on the wood. All the sanding is done with an electric hand held sander and took about 3 hours to re-sand properly.  

Once it's been sanded the floor needs to be cleaned of every single little spec of dust, wood chips, etc because otherwise they will get sealed into the boards when the oil goes on and be a constant reminder that you didn't clean them properly! The best thing to clean them with is methylated spirits and a clean rag it cleans up much better than anything else we've tried (and this is the 7th room we've restored the boards in so have had some practice).

Once it's clean and dry out comes the paint brush and tin of Tung Oil and all the edges of the room are painted carefully with the oil.

Next is the wool applicator mop and the oil is rolled on to the rest of the boards.

Then all the doors are shut and the room is out of bounds for 24 - 48 hours to ensure that the oil sets before standing on it.

The next morning coming out into the kitchen it was like Christmas ... looking at those beautiful shiny floors my face light up like a Christmas tree!

C'mon don't they look magical?

And then the Grinch came and stole my Christmas spirit away .... there were a few dry patches that the oil sucked right into the old boards and left some patches.

Being the perfectionists that we are we had to sand all the oil off again in the entire room, clean it, then oil it again.

You need to lightly sand between coats otherwise the floors look grainy and we want them as smooth as a baby's bum.

So out came the electric sander again, and the floors were given a light sand this time it took only 40 minutes.

Then the floors were cleaned with methylated spirits again.

The edges painted in and the mop doing the rest of the job with the oil.

Again, the room is left for 24 - 48 hours .... and yes this time the floors coated evenly and there were no dry patches, they looked amazing.

So amazing in fact that someone thought they might walk across the kitchen ... touching the floors they felt dry but on walking across to the other side they were still a bit wet and sticky and you guessed it ... there were about 5 foot prints made by a certain Mr P.

  

After laughing until we almost cried (what else do you do?!) the next day the floorboards were sanded back FOR A THIRD TIME except we couldn't bare wasting all that oil again and we just sanded back the footprints and patched those areas.

You can't really tell and I was just glad to be finished as you can imagine!

The kitchen floor was out of bounds for about 2 days until we were sure they were absolutely set and dry to walk on.

This meant to get to the laundry/toilet or outside to Lexi we had to go out our front door and through the garage ... oh yes that made for some interesting nights running out the front door in my nightie to do a midnight toilet run.

The things you do when you're renovating!

It's a little bittersweet this is our last room of floorboards to restore - we have now done all 4 bedrooms, the living room, hallway and now the kitchen and dining area.

Now we get to live with these stunning originally restored 50+ year old jarrah floorboards and it sure does make all the work worthwhile. 

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