I wanted to show you a few of the jobs we did over the past few weeks, from Monocoat to stain jobs.
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I wanted to show you a few of the jobs we did over the past few weeks, from Monocoat to stain jobs.
The fun has come back to work! We got this floor so smooth that even a fat man can slide 10 feet across the room:
That was a hickory job on a second floor with Monocoat. The trouble on that floor was getting the scratch out so folks walking up the stairs wouldn't see a mark when their eyes are level with the floor. We hit it with 40 and 60 with the big machine to get it flat, then the 3DS (Sweetie, as we call it) did the rest of the work. Then 80 grit and 100 grit, and then to get all the marks out we did not use the buffer. Instead we used the 12x18 orbital sander (the Shake and Bake) with 120-grit 3M Gold paper. No 100-grit big machine and no screens ... folks, if you have not use the Gold paper, you are missing out. I have not used a screen in four years, and the floors are the best ever.
Here's another job we did; if you look at this odd shot of a floor we stained, you cannot see a scratch:
The sun comes bursting on it around 2:30 and boy, if we left a scratch, it would look BAD! On this job we finished with the 120 Gold paper on the 16-inch buffer, then the Shake and Bake with 120 Gold Paper with a thin white pad backed with a thick red pad. The key is getting the right backing for each unit. I do not like screens much-new products keep making our lives better. It seems that the dark stain is coming back into style.
The next job here is a dark walnut job-2,000 feet with lots of glass and long runs. The trouble was the detail around the kitchen area. They have what I call butler area as well-a small preparation area behind the kitchen. I did not want to sand along the cabinets and leave any marks. Hand-work would have taken forever ... so I used the flex pad on the edger and a trick that Mr. Boone showed me with yard sticks. I tape the metal yard stick up along the run, and this way the edger cannot hit the cabinets:
All we need to hand work is the little bit left behind:
It is so easy to damage the cabinets, and in this case they did not have any trim to cover a mistake. No scratch or stain could hit them; we were so careful not to get in a rush on this job.
The trouble on this job was the floor was cupped bad, and the last floor folks had put wave all in it-they did not use a hard plate or a multi-disc sander on it. We cut it on a 45 with 40 grit, then hit it with 40 straight. Next cut was 60 straight with a slow pace of walking. Then the next cuts were 3DS with 80 grit, 100 grit and the buffer with 120 Gold paper with a thick red pad. The last cut was the 150-grit on the Shake and Bake. Now the reason for going so fine: The house had water damage from the ice maker, they did not want me to do a hallway going to the bedrooms, so I installed a transition at that door to the hallway and we matched the color. The last folks water-popped the floor to hide the scratch rather than sand it better. I do not like water-pop floors, but we did not have a way around it to get the match. Getting it sanded super fine, then water-popping it, made the dark look good and the floor did not have a ton of grain jumping out at you. We got the color, plus a flat floor:
Our work makes the existing waved floor look bad. Now they wish they had let us go into the rest of the house, but that will lead to more work down the road.
We are still booking out into February; it is nice to have jobs lined up. The mad rush of RUSH RUSH RUSH is over; I had a great time with family over Christmas! I let the stress go, but my body still hurt some. Getting old is rough. Like Granddad said, "Getting old is not for the sissy types."
