Photography
Painting » Fri, Sep 22nd 2006 12:47 pm
Back in July, I decided out of nowhere to paint my bedroom and re-stain its hardwood floor. I figured I could have the whole thing done in no more than two days. I have a habit of grossly underestimating the complexity of things.
Firstly, I decided to paint each wall a different colour. This meant that after giving each wall its coat of paint, I had to clean everything and start over on the next colour. Each wall needed three coats. Painting took two days.
When painting was over, I was ready to get started on the floor. I grabbed my Dad’s palm sander and got to it. About fifteen minutes later, I was convinced that either palm sanders sucked, or my floors protective coating could stop bullets. I’d barely scratched the surface.
I went out and bought some grainier pads for the sander. It barely mad a difference. So I tried with my hands. Hardly an improvement, still. It was at this point I figured I’d call in the bug guns. I went out to the garage, grabbed my Dad’s heavy-duty belt sander, slapped the grainiest effing belt I could find on it, and pressed it onto my floor. It tore through about 1mm of floor per second. I was back in business.
My bedroom isn’t big. It’s actually very small. About 10’x10’ small. Despite this, I was on my knees sanding that floor from morning to night, and I still had a corner left to do the next morning, and I still had to re-cover it.
I coated the floor five times (once every two hours, as the can says) and left it over night. Then I read the can again and it said something about taking 72 hours to fully cure. I looked around at the mess in which I’d been living for the last four days, felt the dryness of the floor, and quickly decided that my can was wrong. It takes until exactly after dinner to fully cure.
I rested on my bed on some rubber pads, as it was my failure to do so last time that prompted me to recover my floor in the first place. After dinner, I placed everything back in my room, and made sure to tread softly for the next little while just in case my can was right about the 72 hours.
I must say the result was pretty close to worth it. My floor looks really nice now that it’s back to its natural white pine colour. The depressing off-white walls are gone, replaced with pretty colours that match my bed perfectly. It’s also a lot darker in here, which perfectly compliments my distaste for natural light.
The experience taught me a couple important things. One, never use a belt sander near hanging bed sheets. Two, if you’re thinking about re-doing a room, just buy a new room if you can afford it; I probably inhaled enough sawdust to shit a useable two-by-four.
Anyway, here’s a photo from the painting process.
