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After three weeks of work, the floor is finally done. All told about 150 hours were involved (mostly waiting):

• 120 hours waiting for paint stripper to do its thing
• 12 actually stripping paint
• 4 hours of sanding
• 1 hour total cleaning (before, during and after sanding)
• 1 hour spreading polyurethane
• 8 hours waiting for the poly to dry

And now we just have to wait a week before moving the furniture back in. But that’s the easy part.

The 12 hours on my hands and knees scraping paint (in hour intervals) was grueling, but in the end, it was worth. What once looked like this now looks like this.

Update: I should include a little histroy of the floor – at least as far as Jack and I have determined. In the finished photo you may notice some dark spot. These appear to be burn marks from a former refinish job gone wrong, and illustrate why we didn’t try to use a drum sander.

So, the history of the floor:

1. 1927 - floor laid down
2. Refinish attempted as evidenced by burn marks
3. Floor painted brown (possibly to hide burn marks)
4. Brown carpet put down (all rooms upstairs carpeted)
5. Raidiator pipe leaks/breaks; ruins brown carpet
6. Raidiator repaired, damaged carpet replaced with teal carpet
7. 2005 - teal carpet removed, paint stripped, floor refinished

We could have tried to get out the burn and gouge marks from the prior refinish, but I was afraid that would result in us doing further harm. In the end we opted for a quick sanding with an aggressive 20 grit pad and a bit of hand sanding from Jack to lessen the impact of the marks. Plus, the marks are part of the history of the room — and the imperfections are part of the whole house’s charm for Sarah and I.