Red oak floors

About three weeks ago, we got our hardwood floors delivered for the main and second levels.  After much waffling between wide plank reclaimed floors and unfinished oak, it finally came down to budget and we went with the oak.  I was hoping to at least get 7 inch wide oak planks, but that didn't work out either.   

So in the end, we went with quarter sawn, 5 inch wide, unfinished red oak in lengths varying from 1 foot to 8 feet.

I had a lot of flooring companies try to talk me into pre-finished floors since they are easier to install and have a more durable factory finish on them.  But I'm a bit old fashioned when it comes to wood.  That's why I love reclaimed floors so much!  

Site finished floors can be sanded to a super smooth finish with no micro-bevels between the boards and you can finish them any way you like.

If I had it all to do all over again, I might have chosen white oak since it doesn't have the pink undertones that red oak has.  But the stairs were done in red oak so I wanted the floors to match.

The quarter sawn boards have a more lined look to them than plain sawn oak which can have a pretty funky pattern in the grain.  I like the quiet feel of the quarter sawn oak and that they are more dimensionally stable so they shouldn't have as much movement with humidity changes.

I also prefer the look of long boards, especially in large rooms.  So I ended up ordering a bit extra wood and asked our installer to pull all the pieces that were smaller than 2 feet (unless he needed them on an edge).

He did manage to use a bunch of the little pieces in our closet that will eventually be covered over with Ikea Pax units.  So now we have a few unopened boxes that we can return. 

You might remember me previously mentioning that Steve agreed to finish our floors for us.  

The first step was sanding.  This took way longer than I thought it would!  But Steve is a bit of a perfectionist.  

You have to start with a fairly coarse grain and move your way up to a very fine grain and finally screening.  The result is a floor that's as smooth as a baby's bottom!

I wanted to use an oil finish on the floors instead of the usual polyurethane.  I prefer the feel of an oiled floor underfoot and wanted a light natural or whitish colour.

Steve did a lot of research on this (since he likes oiled floors as well) and found a supplier of Rubio Monocoat.  This is a non-toxic, zero VOC, plant based oil that protects and colours the wood in one step.  They have 42 colours to choose from, but we chose "smoke".  It kept the oak pretty much natural but with a slight light grey in the grain.  As you can see in the picture, smoke has a hint of green in it as well which we thought would take some of the pink out of our red oak.  

We found the best method to apply the oil was with a sponge.

We then buffed the floor with a red pad and then with a white pad.

After about 12 hours, we could walk on it with socked feet and after about 48 hours you could feel how it hardened the wood.

I absolutely love the colour and the subtle sheen of the floor.  

So calm, warm, and natural.

And no off-gassing!  

It actually kind of smells nice when it's first applied, and has no odour at all after a couple of days.

DIY plywood floors

I was the laughing stock of my dad, our contractors, the hardwood flooring guy (who laid our main floors), Ron at Rona (since my dad HAD to tell him my plans for the maple plywood I was buying) and a couple of friends, but I went ahead with it anyway.

I (along with my ever supportive sister--she loves wacky ideas as much as I do!) laid 3/4 inch maple plywood on our entire third floor.

I didn't come up with this myself. I was originally introduced to plywood floors by Daniel and Valeria at Hindsvik blog. They laid these amazing plywood floors in their house and I was completely inspired to give it a go. Our third floor even looks like theirs!

But I also did a Google search and found that many other people have done their own version as an affordable and fairly simple finished floor.

We had a pretty level subfloor to start with but it was a bit noisy and our master bedroom is right below. So I decided to lay a thin foam pad to absorb some sound. Daniel and Valeria laid their floors over thin carpeting so I thought that thin foam pad would be OK.

I cut it to size and taped it down with tuck tape.

We then roughly laid out a few boards that were pre-cut by Rona into pieces that were 1 ft. wide and either 4 ft. or 8 ft. long. We thought this would give it the feel of old floorboards although I have seen others do it in squares or just 4 ft. X 8 ft. sheets.

When I was happy with our starting point, I started nailing in the boards. We used 1 3/4" finishing nails for most of this project.

In the end, I did end up using a few screws here and there because I found that some boards had a bit too much movement. This may have been because of the underlayment which had a bit of give. The screws did the trick though.

My sister brought along her third baby-- her Makita mitre saw to help us out. You need something like this for cutting and fitting the boards. A mitre box and a hand saw just wouldn't be enough.

We also had to do a bit of ripping on some edge pieces with the table saw.

I was getting pretty good with these saws by the end! My proudest cut was this little "L" to go around a structural bit of the house.

Perfection!

This is yours truly in action!

Wearing my "uniform" as of late.

A couple of 5 year olds in my daughter's class looked at me in disgust last week and said, "you've got huge holes in your pants!"

Ha ha! I can take it!

The floors starting to take shape.

After we laid all the planks, I set the nails,

and filled the holes with wood filler.

There were a few boards that had larger gaps between them so I filled those (and the screw heads) with wood filler as well.

I then gave the floors a light sanding.

And finally, 3 coats of water based, satin finish Varathane for floors.

The pad method for applying the Varathane (shown in the picture) did leave some marks for me, so I did the final coat entirely with a brush-- back breaking!

Ta da!!

This is the finished floor!

I kind of love it!

Here's the back bedroom with trim in place.

Can't wait to get some furniture in!

Odds and Ends

The house is really coming together quickly now and I find myself with no time to blog.  

The stairs were installed.  All six runs of them.

I was so excited to finally get them and so happy with the way they looked.  

I love the angled zig-zag profile.  

Eventually we will drywall the stringers so that the oak zig-zag is the feature that will stand out.

Unfortunately, after living with them for a few days, I realized that they made the treads on the first run (the most important run!) a half an inch smaller than the second run.  We did have space constraints in a couple of areas, but not there.

So I asked the stair guys to re-do them.  They were absolutely fantastic about it!  They took them away, re-made them, and re-installed them in 3 days.  

Our treads are now a comfortable 10 1/2 inches in this run.

When I thanked the main guy for doing such a great job, he said to me, "The sooner you're happy with your stairs, the sooner I'll get paid!"  

True enough.

The third floor 1/2 bath got tiled, and I built the high gloss grey Godmorgon vanity that will go in this room.

The entire house got painted including the big steel beam.  

Our painter preferred to work the night shift, which suited us just fine.  It meant he wasn't going to be in the way of our regular guys.

We went all white for the walls and ceilings -- Atmosphere by Dulux.  It has a very slight purplish tinge to it which makes it soft but not creamy.

The beam is Jet Black by Benjamin Moore.

The master bath is getting tiled.  

It took me a long time to decide on these tiles because I didn't want to be disappointed with this room.  I settled on dark grey 12" x 24" porcelain tiles for the floor with matching 2" x2" tiles for the shower bottom.  The walls around the shower will be 12" x 24" Carrera marble.

I love it so far.

And we got our hardwood delivered!

5" wide, 3/4 inch, unfinished, quarter sawn red oak.

 This wood has been a big source of stress for me lately.  

With all the drywall mud, scratch coating and floor leveling, the humidity in the house was way too high.  

The wood company recommends an ideal humidity level between 45 and 50 so the floors don't gap or buckle after installation.  

After getting the furnace going and running a de-humidifier for a few weeks, we finally have the humidity at just over 50.  Pretty good now, I think.  

Steve gave me a few colour samples of the Rubio oil finish we are using for the floors. 

I truly had a hard time deciding between the three on the left -- Smoke, Oyster, and White.

You'll have to wait and see which one we decided on :-)

And finally, they leveled and scratch coated the front hall (this just happened today).

It was terribly uneven since this area still had the original sub-floor with an original beam and joists underneath.

A lot of yelling and swearing over this one.  From the guys-- not me!  I just left them to it.  

They eventually got it done.

These are the tiles we're putting in.

24" x 24" grey Limestone tiles.  Although they're actually porcelain-- they're just called "Limestone".  

Same look, no sealing.

I really like the colour, the matte texture and the subtle swirling.

Tomorrow is floor day!  

The installer dropped off all his stuff this evening and starts laying the hardwood at 7:00AM.

So excited!

Happy Halloween!

More of Steve's stone

As I mentioned before, we got Steve to clad the new cinder-block foundation wall in the back of the house with stone to match his dry-stacked wall.

This wasn't exactly necessary for us to move in (and that has been our focus lately), but it sure does finish off the exterior.

He found natural stone for the cladding that is pretty much exactly the same as the stone in the wall.

This is the finished wall, complete with LED lights going down the stone steps. 

I haven't seen these lights on yet, but I imagine they'll give a nice glow along the path.

This is the basement walkout. 

There will be some wood framing around the door eventually that will cover up that orange foam.  We couldn't put the stone right around the corners because it would completely encase the sliding door.  The windows and doors peeps don't recommend doing that in case we ever have to repair or replace the door.  With a painted wood frame, we can do it without damaging our beautiful stonework.

This reno has been chock full of funny little issues like this one that need some kind of thoughtful solution.  A total learning experience for me.  In hindsight, we could have made the opening a bit larger than the door. 

As I keep saying-- we'll know that for the next house!

This is the full back of the house right now.  I know, what a mess!  We've still got railings to go in on the second floor balcony and the deck to build (with storage underneath).  Still, it's coming together very nicely, I think.

Paul and I are already thinking of other stone projects for Steve to do in the front of the house.  We just love his work!

Our hardwood floors are going in next week and Steve is going to finish them for us-- with me as a helper!  Yep, he does woodworking too. 

And this morning he gave me an amazing idea for the front hallway!  I think I'm going to save this one as a surprise-- even for Paul.  MOSTLY for Paul!  It's that good.



The new front door

After the giant fail of trying to refinish the original door of The Bennett House, I kind of got set on having a wood front door.

Unfortunately, when I looked into the cost of wood exterior doors, I was a bit floored!  Especially since we decided to widen the opening to line up better with the 2nd floor balcony door above it.

I then looked into second hand old doors, but they needed too much work and a lot of customization to fit our opening so I decided to try and find a cheaper, custom manufacturer.

I did find one.  Through Kijiji of all places!

I have to admit, the whole set-up did not fill me with confidence, but I decided to take the risk and go for it anyway.  If it worked out, I would be saving thousands of dollars!

So they took our measurements, and then sent them off to China where our door, side lights and transom got custom made.  

Eight weeks later, it arrived in pieces at a warehouse in Markham. I managed to drive it home in our mini-van, but was completely packed and the suspension was pretty low.  This is a seriously heavy door!

I wasn't quite sure what the quality would be like since we paid about a quarter the cost of local door manufacturers, but when we opened it up, it looked pretty good!

Looked alright, yes, but didn't fit! 

And not just in one direction.  None of the parts fit together properly.  Some were too big and some were too small.

Our guys spent 2 days working on the door-- cutting and sanding and re-fitting it.

But they got it looking like this!

Pretty fantastic, I think!

I picked up a nice door set from Rona that looked hand forged and slightly beaten up-- just my style.  

But when I went over to see it installed, this was what I saw.

Notice anything weird about the interior handle?  

Honestly!

Anyway, it's all fixed up now-- lever pointing in the right direction.

I think it looks gorgeous!  

A heavy, black-stained, solid mahogany door for a fraction of the cost!

As long as you have a good carpenter ;-)