Living on the square in Canton MS

So here is what it looks like when the whole place has had the first day of massive oiling done. Picture set is here. It is very deep and rich, we love it.

Check out what the floors look like before/after the tung oil. The picture set is here. On the first day, we put down 3-5 thin coats of oil on the floors, until they are saturated and the oil slicks up on the surface for 20-40 minutes.  Then you come back and wipe up any puddles/slick spots.  Then you let the floor rest over night and do the same thing again the next day.  Then your floors are done, you could do it a third day if you want to.

Check out the picture of the finished paint job. Click here

The painting is continuing as quickly as we can…we are anxious to move in. The rooms have been rolled out, and need trim and cutting in. Here is what it looks like today. See the pictures here.

Here is a quick update on where we are with the painting. We are using big, bold colors!
Here are the pictures here

We are using the “ben” line of Benjamin Moore paints from Seabrook down in Ridgeland. The coverage is awesome, what a great paint, it’s a one coater on the lighter colors, and two coats on the dark colors. We are very happy with it.

So here we are, 9 days after beginning, and the floors are sanded and ready for a finish.  We rented a drum sander, edge sander, and polisher over the course of 9 days.  Pictures of the progress are here.  So here’s the break down.  First we had to sink all the nails with a punch so the sand paper wouldn’t get torn on them.  We vacuumed and cleaned all foreign matter from the floors.  We usually had two people working, one on the drum sander and one on the edger.  We had those two sanders for 9 days, and the polisher for 2 hours.  We have never redone floors before so it took alot of trial and error to figure the tools out.  Don’t be too scared about the horror stories people tell you about these sanders being hard to use, and gouging your floor.  It’s not that difficult.  We ran each floor through 20, 36, 60, 80, and 100 grit sand paper on the drum sander and the edger.  It took about 2 days per room.  Results will vary.  That’s what it took us averaged out with a learning curve to get the tools performing the best in our conditions.  More to follow on the floors tips and tricks.  We decided to finish the floors with pure tung oil which we ordered from realmilkpaint.com, we haven’t started applying it yet, we’ll keep you posted.  We’ve begun painting now too, so that will follow soon.

Here in Canton you have Phillips Lumber and DeViney Tool Rental.  Between the two here is what you need and how much it will cost.  Drum sander $45 per day, Edge sander $35 per day, Buffer $25 per day.  Then you also need to add sand paper 30, 60, 100 grit depending on the job your doing, and buffing pads or screens for the buffer to use in between coats of poly urethane / linseed / wax.  You can also rent the tools by the week and only pay for 3 days or get other discounts.  Talk to James at Phillips, he is very helpful.  I’m not on first name basis with the DeViney guys…..yet.

Here’s the deal, the floors are 120 years old, and have been painted.  So we need to sand them down and put a new finish on them.  We are thinking of going with linseed oil for the “original” type of finish.  I’m doing some research post comments if you’ve got any suggestions.