So I have finally gotten around to posting again. I have been working all day everyday on the house. Johnny and I worked all last week on the hardwood floors. First we had to rent the drum sander, which does the main sanding on the floors. That took two full days as we had to start with very rough grit sandpaper because of how bad a shape the floors were in. Once we had the large areas sanded, we rented the edge sander (there is a small area against the walls that the drum sander can't reach). The edge sander and a small vibrating hand sander were used to get the edges and corners.
While the floors were being sanded, I was also putting wood filler in the cracks between the wood pieces. There were several places that had very minor water damage and the boards had pulled apart a little. The wood filler is stain-able and pretty much disappears after the stain is applied.
I bought several different colors of stain and mixed them together to get just the color I wanted. For the next two days Parke and I stained the floors. Finally Johnny put two layers of polyurethane on the floors.
The process took a whole week and was a ton of work, but the floors look amazing now! Here are the photos. The first two photos are how the floors began, then after they were sanded, then stained, and finally after the poly was applied (You might also notice some changes to the kitchen).
