The floors on 1-16-2016

On Monday (1-11-2016) we put a second coat of oil on the upstairs floors, the stairway, the guest room floor, and the master bedroom floor, and we put the first coat of oil on the rest of the great room floor. On Tuesday morning, Malchiah and I wiped excess oil off of all the floors. Most of the oil had soaked in by then, but there was still some on the surface. We weren’t able to apply any more hemp seed oil during the rest of the week – I worked away from home Wednesday and Thursday and had other tasks to take care of on Friday.

I took a few photos of the floors this morning to share here in the blog. The oiling is not finished yet, but these photos should give you an idea of how things look right now. (Note: left-clicking on any photo will open a larger view of it.)

Beginning to oil the floors

On Sunday (1-10-2016) we did some more cleaning in order to get as much dust as we could cleaned up. Then, we were excited to start oiling – we just couldn’t wait! So, beginning upstairs in one of the bedrooms, we started the process of treating all of the floors with hemp seed oil. It was a simple process, actually. We poured oil on the floor and spread it around. I had a pad attached to a broom handle, and the three younguns working with me used rags. We oiled the upstair’s floors and window sills and then oiled the guest room and master bedroom floors and their window sills. The next day, we applied a second coat of oil over the first. We then put a first coat on the rest of the floor that hadn’t yet been done.

We’ll be applying the other coats soon, but I wanted to share some photos of the process and how the floor looked with a fresh coat of hemp seed oil. The glossy look is because the oil was fresh on top of the floor and hadn’t soaked in yet.

Video: 1-9-2016 house walk through

I made a walk through video of the house yesterday. I thought that some of you would like to see it with painted walls and sanded hardwood floors.

I hope you enjoy it.

Sanded hardwood floor

I keep working on the house as time allows. In September, I borrowed a friend's old flooring drum sander. It needed new foam on the drum. I bought some off of Ebay with its own adhesive, cut it to size, and adhered it after scraping/sanding off all the remains of the old foam. It seemed to work fine. I used 3/8” foam, but 1/2” would have been better (it ends up requiring the sanding sheets to be have about 1/2” cut off their length – not a big deal). When removing the drum in order to install a belt for the vacuum system, one side of the aluminum frame that holds the drum broke off. I had to repair it using a thin metal plate bolted to the side to hold the broken piece in place. The repair worked fine.

The flooring boards had some variation in height because the level of the tongues and groves was not consistent between all the boards. I’m not complaining – a friend milled the flooring for me, and I know how hard it can be to get everything consistent without an actual flooring mill machine. Because of the variations, I had to do some extra sanding to get the floor surface level.
I started with 24-grit sand paper, moved to 36-grit, 60-grit, 80-grit, and then 100-grit. The sander itself is not as strong and aggressive as I imagine a new machine would be. That was a good thing – less chance of creating divots and hollows in my floor. Doing the edge sanding was more of a job. I used a belt sander, mainly. This worked well.

In all, I spent about two weeks worth of work sanding the floors, but they are now done. Once we get things all cleaned up in the house, we’ll finish them with hemp seed oil. I don’t want to put a plastic finish on my natural wood floors. So, polyurethane is not an option. Besides, if you get a scratch in a traditional poly finish, you have a scratch in your finish that cannot be simply repaired. With an oiled finish, you can repair such things with a little sanding and more oil. An oil finish is not glossy/shiny, of course, but that’s not the look I desire. An oil finish is warm, soft, and durable. Hemp seed oil (and tung oil) is a drying oil – it will harden when it dries (it takes about two weeks to dry).


I’ll update after we get the floors oiled. In the meantime, here are few photos of the sanded floor.

Beech hardwood floor in the guest room

At the beginning of December, we put down the first of the hardwood floor in our house. We worked to get one room painted and ready for the floor. We chose the guest room because it’s out of the way (not a traffic area).

Painting involves mixing our own paint (based upon a recipe I came up with after several experiments and trials). It’s basically a clay-based paint. The first coat has a lot of silica sand added to give texture to the walls. Technically, you would call this an Alis. It’s actually a thin plaster. We brush it on with paintbrushes, trying to get it even. It not only provides a nice texture for the walls, it helps cover up imperfections in the finish coat of plaster. The second coat of paint is the same recipe but without the sand added. This brushes over the first coat, brightening the walls (white) and making sure the texture is locked into place (the sand can be rubbed off the walls before the final coat).

Once we painted all of the walls and the ceiling in the guest room, we installed the hardwood floor in the room. The wood we have is from some trees we cut and which a friend milled, planed, and tongue-and-grooved for us. It’s been sitting in the house for a couple of years waiting.

In the fall of 2013, I bought a flooring nailer. It was a good deal, although it was a refurbished unit. I never tried it out until it was time to install the floor. Well, it didn’t work right. I wouldn’t drive the nails or staples in all the way, leaving them about 1/16” above the tongue. I tried everything I could think of to get it replaced or repaired, but there was no honest way. At that point, I spent five minutes with a file modifying the base plate, and now the nailer works fine.

We spent two or three days laying the floor, and it turned out quite nice. We used American Beech in this room. Some of the logs sat waiting to be milled longer than ideal which resulted in some spalting of the wood. Spalting is wood coloration caused by fungi. If left long enough, the wood will rot, but spalting does not mean the wood is rotten. It adds additional character to the floor. Some people pay extra money for spalted wood.

After we installed the floor, I made some templates for finishing the window seat. Then, I cut the necessary curves in some Maple hardwood flooring that I bought and which is slated for the window seats/sills. I nailed these boards in place except for the last one at the outside edge. I need to rip it to the proper width, curve the two ends, and then round the top edge a little. I will also install a board along the wall underneath the outside edge board.

I’m pleased with how the floor and window seat turned out. It will be nice when we have all of the floors and window seats done.

Plaster, studs in the kitchen, & underlayment

Last week we were able to get back to plastering the interior walls full time. We finished the small section in the master bathroom that needed done and moved on to the upstairs walls in the center, open part of the house. We also plastered the wall and around the window in on the landing upstairs.

Another project was to install 2x2 framing on the kitchen walls. I’m going to build in the cabinets and wanted a smooth surface against which to build them. We’re also going to have tile backsplash above the counter and below the upper cabinets. There needs to be something to attach the cabinets to, also. I’m going to put up green board (moisture-resistant drywall) on the kitchen walls. The straw bale walls will be plastered behind the drywall to make sure they are well sealed.

So, once I finished the studding, we plastered the kitchen walls with the first coat. Around the windows and the door, the plaster will be shaped to meld with the surfae of the drywall.

One other project we completed last week was to put down 1/2 inch plywood underlayment upstairs. We have hard wood (oak, maple, and hickory) boards for a subfloor upstairs which also makes the ceiling downstairs. The underlayment will provide a more even surface for installing the finished hardwood floor on later. It will also serve to keep some of the dirt and mess from plastering from sifting through the cracks. Actually, we’ve already had a fair bit of dirt work its way through the cracks and fall from the ceiling downstairs. So, before we could put the underlayment down, we had to clean out as much of the dirt as we could. We used the air compressor with an air nozzle and a vacuum to get as much as we could. We also put down red rosin paper before the plywood. We’ll have another layer of the rosin paper under the finished hardwood.

Material accumulation

One of the things I’ve been doing recently is accumulating material for tasks to be completed on the house. Earlier this spring, I hauled some boards to a friend for him to plane them and tongue-and-groove them. These boards will become the finished floor in the house. A couple of weeks ago I took the rest of the boards to him and picked up the first half which he had gotten done. They’re now stacked inside the house awaiting the time when we’ll be ready to put them down. I’m sure I’ll have to move them a time or two as dictated by other jobs in the house before we actually begin installing the floor.

The flooring is oak and beech. The beech has a lot of character, including some spalting, in it. The oak overall is nice. The second set of boards to be done appeared to be of better quality than the first set. I also purchased about 300 square feet of maple flooring from a family that had some left over when they had new floor installed in their house. You can see the stacks of flooring in the photo to the left. The oak is in the living room and the other is in the kitchen/dining area.

Another item now residing inside the house is 20 bags of number 6 tile kaolin clay to be used for the finished plaster on the interior walls. You can see some of the bags stacked near the flooring in the kitchen/dining area in the photo above. I wasn’t sure how much I would actually need, so I ordered 2,000 pounds of it. I figured it was better to have too much than too little. I ordered the clay from Kentucky Mudworks which is located in Lexington. They have a special deal for in-state shipping. I met the truck in town to get the pallet loaded with the 20 50 pound bags of clay.

Several weeks ago I also bought bricks, mortar, and clay liner for building the chimney. I have yet to construct the chimney, though. The brick and flue liner are still on the trailer which is parked near the house. The bags of mortar are stored on the porch where they will not get wet.

I also have paint for painting the house. I needed to get some for painting the fascia boards before gutters are installed. So, I purchased enough to paint the whole house when we can.

(Examples of the flooring: beech in left photo, oak in right.)

Second floor subfloor

We’ve spent several days preparing boards for the upstairs subfloor which is also the ceiling for the first floor. Previously, I bought some cull lumber for this purpose. I stickered the boards after culling out the ones that weren’t usable for the house. That was a few years ago (I can’t remember if it was three or four).

Jon and I ran a few of them through the planer several weeks ago when we had a lull in other construction tasks. Dad and I started planing the rest of the boards last week. We had to run each board through the planer three times, taking off about 3/32” each pass. A few boards were thicker and had to be run through more times. The final thickness was 15/16” with at least one side on each board smooth enough for the ceiling.

The next step in the process was cutting the boards to length. The original lengths were from 8 to 12 feet long. We cut them to 48”, 54”, and 67” lengths. Then, each board could be edged on the table saw before finally have a rabbet cut on each edge so there would be a lap joint when nailed into place.

We determined the necessary lengths of the boards based upon the spacing between the floor joists, wanting the boards to span across at least three joists. For most of them, that is 48”. It’s easier to edge shorter boards on the table saw than longer ones. Also, I’ve left the boards at various widths. So, when they are installed, a row is put across which spans at least three floor joists, and then another row is put on.

While Jon and dad began installing the boards we prepared by Monday of this week, I finished cutting the rabbet joints in the remaining boards which had already been cut to length and edged. When I finished, I took them down to the house and checked on their progress. They were doing fine. So, while they worked on the floor, I put flashing on the front corners of the porch roof and installed the ridge cap.

The floor butts up against the cathedral ceiling at the front of the house. Dad cut the edge of the board at 55 degrees to match the angle of the cathedral ceiling. The angle matched, but the boards didn’t line up perfectly because the existing ceiling is not perfect level across its face. That’s okay. I’ll cover this joint with some molding later on.

By the end of the day, we had the floor/ceiling on one side, the landing that will be at the top of the stairs, and the first section on the other side installed. We’ll continue putting the rest in on Friday. Tomorrow, I have to process a few more boards which are already planed (the ones Jon and I planed a few weeks ago). We need some more to finish the job. If I get those ready, we ought to be able to get the rest of the east side done in a few hours on Friday. Then, we might stack a few bales in one section.

    

First floor subfloor

Last week I ordered 48 sheets of Advantech sheeting for the first floor subfloor. I’ve tried to get a good deal on material for the subfloor, but the guy I’ve been buying lumber from hasn’t had any Advantech for a while. He offered to get what I needed from his supplier at his cost which ended up being about $2.50 per sheet less than what I would pay elsewhere.

I picked up the material on Sunday so that Jon, Dad, and I would be able to start putting down the subfloor on the main level of the house yesterday. I spent a couple of hours getting things ready Sunday afternoon, moving things out of the house and smoothing out the ground under the house – I needed to put plastic in the crawl space.

So, on Monday morning, we began by caulking gaps along the sill plate and boxing on the foundation walls, a job that was partially done last week. When we ran out of caulk (we were most of the way around, and I bought more caulk at lunch time so we could finish the job), we started putting plastic on the ground in the crawl space. I bought some 6 mil black plastic on Sunday for this purpose.

The plastic comes in a 20 foot width. So, we rolled out enough to go from the front to the back of the crawlspace with a little to curve up onto the wall. We had to cut it to get it around the piers the timber frame sits on. We securely taped it around each pier. It took two widths to cover the main part under the house. We taped the seam together in the middle where the two pieces met.

After putting plastic down under the kitchen and under the mudroom, we began hanging radiant barrier insulation along the crawl space walls. This is a reflective material with bubble wrap in the middle. The idea is to hang it from the top of the crawl space wall so that it hangs down and curves out onto the plastic. This material’s insulation value is not diminished if it gets wet (I don’t want it to get wet, of course) unlike fiberglass insulation. It should help to keep the crawl space temperature moderated and allow us to capitalize on the thermal mass of the earth below the house. If we insulated under the floor, this wouldn’t be possible.

I learned of this method of insulating a crawl space from an insulation contractor in the St. Louis area on a forum a few years ago when researching what to do for our house. He claimed that his experience is that the temperature in the crawl space is maintained within 10 degrees of the temperature inside the house.

Once we insulated the areas that were already caulked, we began putting down Advantech sheets for the subfloor. We had to cut around timber frame posts and modify lengths because I hadn’t laid out the floor joists in the frame as I should have. However, the process when quite well. By the end of the day, we had finished the floor in the timber frame and also the kitchen area.

We’ll put the floor down over the root cellar and in the mudroom area on Wednesday. We also have to put floor down on the straw bale wall toe-up all the way around. There’s also one section of porch floor in what will be the summer kitchen that needs to be put down. We should be able to finish all that on Wednesday and start putting in window and door bucks, too.