Our Finished Floor

Click on photo to enlarge

I finally finished our living room floor on Saturday morning and none too soon as it's supposed rain or snow tomorrow.

I haven't added the baseboards yet because we needed to get the furniture in off the porch before the weather hits, but I can measure those, cut & finish them outside when the weather permits, and just move the furniture a bit to nail them in place.

The floors came out nice and Peggy is very happy with them so I think I made points there!

Blogger Dread Pirate Roberts asked a couple of questions about the floor so I'll answer those here.

1. The tiny spaces between a few of the boards will collect dust and crud but cleaning & waxing will eventually seal them over.

2. Because I used standard 1" x 12" pine planks from the local lumberyard I had to consider the possibility of the wood cupping or warping so I decided to both glue and nail the planks to the plywood sub-floor. I used a non-flammable, supposedly non-toxic adhesive, Taylor's 4071 meta-tec floor adhesive, and I nailed the planks, 3 nails across, every 2 feet. I also acclimated and further dried the planks by stacking them in the house for two months with spacers between each plank to allow for air circulation. The floor is nice & flat with no signs of cupping.

The pine floor is finished with OSMO Hardwax Oil, an environmentally safe product from Germany that is non-toxic & recommended for use on children's furniture as well. It is primarily made from two waxes, carnauba & candelilla, mixed with sunflower, soybean and thistle oils and a bit of highly distilled benzene-free solvent which evaporates upon drying.

The downside is that I messed my back up again doing all that bending & lifting so it's off to the chiropractor again tomorrow.

But it's a pretty floor and as environmentally friendly as I could make it on our budget and in this location.