For the past few weeks (Hervey Bay week not included), my dad and I have been converting the floors of two bedrooms from a masonite (I think) floor to a wooden floor. Well actually, we just nailed the wooden floor onto the masonite, so I suppose a more correct term for the process would be overlaying. Anyway, the first step in the process occurred when the truck from our local Mitre 10 came and dropped off the wood for the floor. The whole family pitched in to carry the wood onto the deck, because there was such a lot of it.
With the first step completed, the hardest part was right next. That is, gluing and nailing the wood to the floor. Because the wood and masonite were too hard for the nail to punch through, we had to drill each nail hole first. My dad and I must have broken over 6 drill-bits between us!
After every single piece of wood was subdued and nailed to the floor for life, we had to punch all the nail holes so the head of the nails were all below the surface. This was done so that when it was time to sand, the nails wouldn’t rip the sanding strips to pieces. Once all the nails were punched, the puttying started. This made sure that any holes wouldn’t be visible when the floor was complete.
Once the punching and puttying was finished, dad had to go into town to hire the sanders. Two sanders are needed to sand a floor: a bigger one for general sanding and a smaller one which is used to sand the edges. The biggest one can be operated standing up, but the smallest one requires the operator to kneel as it is fairly low. Sanding completed, it is possible to shuffle over the floor without getting splinters. See the photos below.
The next step is polishing, but as yet we aren’t quite up to that. When the rooms are finished I’ll probably post some more photos so you can see how they look.
[tags]applying, wood, floor, wooden floor, bedroom, masonite, nailed, Mitre 10, family, gluing, nailing, drill, drilling, punch, nail punch, putty, puttying, hire, sanders, splinters, polish, polishing[/tags]
