Week 26 – Wood! (04/20/09 – 04/26/09)

The main focus of this week was to get the wood floors and decking done. I will wait on the final finish coat for the floors until the very end of the project, but for now I am finalizing the installation of the wood and get the sanding and buffing done. Keep in mind, I am working with reclaimed wood, which has its own unique beauty and idiosyncrecies. I got some real nice wood for the front porch, which may be seen here:

Reclaimed (unfinished) wood on front porch

A closer look at reclaimed wood porch

The wood floors in the house have been a bit more challenging than the porch wood. The floors inside required extra sanding in order to get the coloring to match up with among the planks that came from various sources. It’s kind of interesting to see the evolution of the floors. See the pictures last week to see what they looked like previously. Early this week some sanding made them look like this:

Wood floors after initial sanding

And then more sanding…

More sanding

And after all the sanding is done, then a preperation coat is put on the floors:

Sanded floors with conditioner coat

As we near completion, a couple more coats of finish will be applied to the floors. Those finish layers will have some tinting to them in order to darken the tone of the floors a bit. This will probably reduce some of the coloration difference between some of the floor planks so that they will appear a bit more uniform.

When I first saw the floors after the first sanding I was worried that the coloration difference between the planks was too extreme. Subsequent sanding helped to diminish this some, and I am quite eager to see the finished product. As I’ve spent more time looking at it, though, I’ve realized what excellent character the color variation adds. Much of the wood in these floors was used previously as flooring in an old house, so the variation inherent in that wood helps to add a greater sence of authenticity to the look. Up until this point, the house definitely felt like a new house, even with a lot of the reproduction details. For exapmple, the trim and mouldings emulate the older style, but with a fresh coat of paint on them and not a single blemish to be seen, it is clear that this detail is not actually old. But with this older wood now exposed (with its flaws and variation), the atmosphere of the house now feels more genuinely old, because it is evident that the very floor you walk on has been around longer than you have been. So an aspect of the house that initially caused me some anxiety (i.e. the variation in the wood) now brings me a lot of satisfaction because of the way it helps make a new house feel old, which is more difficult to accomplish than one might think.

On a side note, we also got the landscaping done this week. It’s pretty simple, but definitely helps to clean up the look. It doesn’t look as much like a construction site as it did before.

Front landscaping

Rear landscaping