Living Room Remodel – Part 5 – The Floor [disaster]

Now that the paint and electrical were finished in the living room, it was time to tackle the last remaining big project – the floors. Before getting into what we’re about to do, let’s take a look back at how the floors were when we bought the house and what we’ve had to do to get them to this point. The house had glued down vinyl plank flooring throughout the living areas and master. The problem with this flooring is that it was installed over the wood floors that were full of termite damage. That meant that the thin vinyl showed all of the hollow areas beneath it and was broken/torn in multiple areas from stepping on it with no support below.

Bye bye vinyl

We opted to remove the vinyl to take a look at what was underneath. What we found was old wood floors that were covered by paint and asphalt. The paint came off easy enough with sanding. The asphalt, however, did not. Our biggest success was with scraping it off using a floor scraper and a shovel. It came off in small pieces and fought the whole way. Once the majority of the asphalt was removed, I started sanding the floors to get back down to the original pine floors. Once the floors were sanded, we could stand back and reveal the extent of the termite damage throughout the floors.

Epoxy

My solution was to clean out the termite trails and then to fill it with epoxy. This would make the floor structurally sound again and create a neat effect as there would be “depth” when the floors were finished. I tested out various epoxies and found a thicker epoxy that did the trick. Too thin of epoxies and it just ran out through the floor and into the crawl space. The thicker epoxy was super hard to sand though. That brings us up to where we are today.

Testing out the epoxy

My first step before proceeding with filling in the rest of the termite damage was to confirm that I can machine the tough/thick epoxy to be flush with the wood. I tried sanding it down previously and failed – it was too hard to sand down that much. So I created a router sled that would allow me to cut the excess epoxy off flush with the top of the wood and then sand the last little bit of it smooth. I made a few modifications to the jig as I went but I was able to get the epoxy cut down. Now, before going too far, I grabbed the sander and sanded it smooth. It worked! So I continued on with the router sled removing the excess epoxy.

More epoxy

When I was done with that, I started clearing out the termite trails using a grinder and a wire wheel. Evidently this is hard on grinders, as it killed my first one within an hour. Off to the store to grab a new grinder and I was back in business.

I cleaned out about half of the remaining floor and got it prepped for epoxy. Next, I vacuumed all of the junk in the termite trails to prep to start pouring epoxy. I mixed up my first batch of epoxy and got it poured into the termite damage. Looking good. I mixed up another batch and poured it out next to the first area. So far so good.

Disaster strikes

As I went back to get ready to mix the third batch, I noticed something wasn’t right. The clear epoxy had turned white and started foaming up. That’s not normal and not good. And, it kicks in 20 minutes or so, which means very little time to react. I scraped out what I could (some was already hardened – white) and scraped the excess off the top of the wood floors. Doesn’t matter though, the epoxy did what it was supposed to – flow down all of the termite trails. Since it has failed, now there is white in all of the termite trails which means it’ll be nearly impossible to clean out completely within a reasonable amount of time. %&##%$

Plan B

My parents gave it their best effort to get it cleaned up, and it looks much better, but without many, many more hours of tedious work, it won’t be ready to be poured again. At this point I can see two options – filling the damage with a solid color or to install new flooring over top. Filling the floors with a solid color will look like a repair job to me, so I’m not interested in that route. New floors it is. I shopped around for rough sawn lumber for me to make my own flooring but found out that it was cheaper for me to buy tongue and groove pine flooring rather than to buy the lumber for me to make my own. So, we got a big pile of wood on order and now we having it sitting in the living room to acclimating to the house.

That’s all, folks

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the frigid temperatures here this weekend. Thanks for following along.