Wood Floor Rescue: A Heart Attack of a Heart Pine Job

Lorie Davidson of Davidson Wood Flooring in Dahlonega, Ga., bid this heart pine job off of real estate photos. When he actually arrived at the farmhouse and saw its original floors, circa 1873, “I had to go back out to the truck and say the Lord’s Prayer and figure out what I was going to do,” he says. To say the flooring was in rough shape would be a colossal understatement—at some point (Davidson estimates during the ‘50s or ‘60s) someone had tried to sand the floor with an angle grinder, leaving huge gouges, and the face had old 8-penny nails. Davidson decided to not sand the gouges completely out, “to kind of tell the story of the floor,” he says. He knew sanding the heart pine would be brutal: “It’s terrible; as soon as you run across it, your paper’s done,” he says. He sanded perpendicular to the floor with 36, then at a 45-degree angle with 40, then straight with 60 before going to his planetary sander. He sealed with Universal Sealer before coating it with waterborne finish. The customer was so thrilled with the results that he asked if Davidson could sand the rest of the house—but by then he had no more heart for this particular heart pine.

SUPPLIERS: Abrasive: Deerfos | Big machine: Lägler Hummel | Edger: American Sanders Super 7 | Finish: Zinsser Universal Sealer, Bona Traffic | Planetary sander: American Sanders Epoch