Since we're talking dog years, it is very appropriate that our blog is seven (or one in dog years), and the topic of today's blog post just happens to involve one particular dog of ours. Our favorite female canine, Lulu, has been a member of our family for just a little longer than we've been blogging. She'll be celebrating her ninth birthday in a few months, and we've had her as a member of our family for just about seven and a half years.

Lulu has an affinity for climbing trees while chasing squirrels, throwing herself against the door when packages are delivered or a friend comes knocking, and generally guarding our home.

Like a seasoned veteran of the body-guarding business, she's honed her skills over the years. She covertly lurks, often appearing to nap, but her senses are always heightened and she's perpetually ready to spring into action to save the day. Evils such as letter delivery, or another dog barking a block or more away don't have a chance when Lulu is on duty. It doesn't even matter if she's upstairs, she'll make the mad dash down our wood stairs and leap towards the door at full speed!

Unfortunately, for our wood stairs, Lulu's skill as a guard dog has taken its toll. Lulu's nails apparently act as razor sharp talons when she's on the job, and years of her relentless pursuit of ensuring a danger free home have left their mark. Some might say she's neurotic, perhaps a bit over-zealous. Those people would be correct. But we love her nonetheless.

Back on January 31, 2003, just days after the stairs were refinished, before we'd even completed stripping the risers, our old home loving hearts were a flutter! 

A short time later (okay, maybe a long time later, like late 2004) we proudly proclaimed our stair and wainscoting project DONE!

But after seven and a half years of watching our stairs slowly transform from beautiful and pristine to clawed and chipped, we decided to do something about it.

Yep, that's what an overzealous 30 pound doggo will do to soft pine stair treads. 

We spoke with our favorite flooring expert (Roland from Royal Oaks Flooring) and he pointed out that the damage done wasn't as much to the wood, save for some scratches, but more to the finish. Her nails caused the poly to fracture and lift the stain finish right off of the treads, leaving exposed bare wood.

Since these stairs have been worn and sanded somewhat thin several times over the 130 years they've been in place, he advised not sanding them again, and instead staining the bare sections and top coating with poly to protect them. Then we can just call all of the scratches and issues a little bit of "character."

Armed with a plan, over the last week we've slowly taken care of this little issue of unsightly damage in an attempt to give Lulu a repaired launch pad for protecting our home. She anxiously observed our progress.

We started by lightly sanding all of the stairs to rough up the existing poly a bit. We also took the opportunity to lightly sand any of the exposed wood where the poly and stain had fractures. This was a quick hand sanding and I used some 400 grit paper, as I wasn't trying to take anything down to the grain and didn't want to leave any major scratches.

We started this process on just one of the stair treads to test the process, but ended up continuing it across the entire staircase once we knew it would work.

After sanding the poly and sufficiently roughing it up, we applied a coat of the Early American oil based stain to fill in any of the bare and scratches spots in the wood. Any totally exposed wood received direct application from a small application brush.

I made a mistake and went a little heavy, leaving it on a bit too long with the first step. That made the bare spots a little darker than they needed to be. After giving a shot on the first tread, I adjusted our approach and went a little lighter on the rest, which turned out better in the end.

Once the spot applications had been applied, we then spread the stain over each and every stair. This allowed us to get all of the nooks and crannies of anything missing.

After wiping away the stain and giving it an adequate chance to dry (we left it for 24 hours while we were out of town)...

...we started the long process of applying the poly. We used the same Bona semi-gloss oil based poly the floor was originally finished with back in January 2003. Luckily we took photos back then of the stain and poly the refinishers used. Today we were able to use that photo to ensure we used the exact same product, without any concern about conflict of recipe.

When it came to applying the poly we had to do a bit of a dance. Since we're living in the house the whole time we're doing this, we decided to poly every other stair with each coat. This would allow us to apply one coat of poly to half of the staircase each night.

We wanted to apply three coats (since it's such a high Lulu traffic area) to offer a bit more protection from fracture in the future. As a result, the whole poly adventure would take six days total.

This allowed us to precariously walk up and down the stairs for six days, skipping every other stair. Since Lulu doesn't know how to walk like this, it meant we had to carry her up and down, and barricade the stairs during the day. She didn't take too kindly to this setup (nobody puts Lulu in a corner).

Now that all is said and done our stairs look tremendously better than they did prior to our attempt at a quick fix. They certainly look far from perfect, but in many ways, that's perfectly fine with us. Our stairs tell a story. Lulu has lived in our home and has been part of our family for nearly half of the time we've been in this home. And while we've gone to great lengths to restore and care for our home, we've also enjoyed many wonderful moments living our lives in this home, and this just adds to the history.

We will likely add a runner to the stairs in the coming years, but this is a good temporary fix in the interim. We love the look of the wood stairs, but realize it may not be the most practical as Lulu gets a little older.

Looking back on our years in this home, and on our seven years of blogging, we've shared our projects and neighborhood with you and have truly enjoyed giving you all a glimpse into what makes DIY and Alexandria so very rewarding. Don't worry, we're not wrapping things up any time soon, and we look forward to sharing our various projects with you for many years to come. Some projects take a weekend, some take years to complete, but all are done with a level of care, enthusiasm, and enjoyment that add to the story of our family.

As we continue to gain experience and confidence in our projects, we'll continue to share the journey here on our blog. We may not post as frequently as we once did, but we hope the things we share offer some insight, encouragement, guidance, or just a little bit of fun that you can enjoy. Whether you've been reading along for many years, or just stumbled on some random post, thank you and we look forward to keeping you updated!

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It had been hidden beneath poorly installed tile for many years, so we knew there'd be some repair necessary. The end result was a floor that needed to be heavily repaired with new heart pine, some serious tar that needed to be removed from the old flooring, and the need for a whole lot of sanding.

Our last post left off just before sanding some DIY wood filler mixed from heart pine sawdust and too little glue and realizing we'd need to apply a second coat of a slightly wetter mix of wood filler...this time with more glue.

Over the weekend we picked up where we left off by mixing up a new batch of wood filler...this time with a full gallon of wood glue available just in case. 

The new batch was much less dry and would work far better to really fill in the voids on the damaged sections of the floor.

The new mix looked and felt much more like a peanut butter coconut cake batter, or maybe a good mix of brown tunafish. Mmmmmm, brown tuna.

We applied the brown tuna using a few wood shims we used to mix up the filler and simply smashed the filler into the voids we wanted to repair.

After allowing the wood glue to fully cure (a little less than 24 hours) we got back to sanding the wood filler, and the floor as a whole.

So we have some good news and some bad news about the floor sanding. As a whole, the sanding all went really well. Using the belt sander and a random orbit sander we worked our way up from 40 grit to 100 grit to prep the floor. That's the good news.

However, the bad news, the damage to the floor is still very obvious, and it's actually right in the middle of the room. The DIY wood filler worked well on many of the damaged sections, but the worst damage in the middle of the floor pretty much can't be fixed completely. So rather than trying to patch or wood fill, we decided to embrace the fact that the floor is over 100 years old and just sanded out the divot to the point where it could be finished.

One thing we could do to make sure the filler patches looked less obvious was to make sure the natural lines between boards weren't being lost. And we did this in the most simple of ways. 

While the wood filler was drying we tried to put a little divot where the boards split. Then, once dry and sanded, Wendy used various shades of brown colored pencils to darken in the wood filler to give the appearance of lines.

The end result of several passes gave what appeared to be faux lines between boards that effectively break up the boards at their natural division. Since we'll be covering the floor with the same topcoat as in the rest of the house, these pencil lines will be sealed in for the long term.

After the floor was fully sanded, lines drawn on, and damaged sections embraced as 100 year old character rather than something we'd rather not have, we were ready to move ahead with the first step of the finishing process.

We're using the same finish techniques as the rest of the house, so we began by sealing with Pallmann Pal-X 325 sealer.

We applied it using a small stain applicator by simply pouring from the container...

...and then dragging the applicator along in a "snowplow" fashion.

We methodically worked back and forth making sure to remove excess along the way and giving ourselves a nice and evenly sealer surface with no puddles.

The sealer truly makes the color of the floor pop, and really lets the beauty of heart pine, even heart pine that's been discolored beneath layers of old flooring, shine through.

Now that the floor has been sealed we just have a few coats of finish topcoat to apply, some moulding to put into the room, some paint to apply, a rim lock to restore, and a vanity bottom to build beneath the sink top. Should only be a few more weekends worth of effort before our tiny downstairs bathroom is fully functional and full of character.

It's been a journey to get this bathroom in shape, and while it may not be the last time we do some work in this room, it's already looking like a place that we'll enjoy for some time until that next project day comes. Can't wait to finish up the work and share the finished look with you.

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Through a very long and drawn out process that included a good deal of heated spousal debate, a little social media luck, and more furniture moving than we could imagine, we had narrowed our process down to both the look we wanted as well as the right person for the job.

When working on a project like this it presents a unique set of challenges since we're not at the house every day to oversee things. As we've hired various contractors (construction, HVAC, plumbing, and now flooring) we've had to put a tremendous amount of trust and faith into the judgement of others. Since we're not on site, when a question comes up, we hope the people we've hired have gotten to know us well enough to either make choices they feel we'd choose, or to contact us when they're not sure which way to go.

Can I just tell you how fortunate we feel that we found Roland and his company, Royal Oaks Flooring? He gets us, he gets old houses, and he understands what needs to be done to make these beautiful floors look awesome.

When we last talked about the floor project we left you with a shot of the "hobbit room" (named for the roughly five foot tall doorframe I constantly smack my head into) after the sealer had been applied.

The thing is, that's the last we saw of the house in person until we came back when everything was finished. But this is the beauty of using a company that is active on social media, it certainly wasn't the last we saw of the house at all.

Wendy and I were watching Roland's Instagram account like hawks to get a glimpse of any updates. 

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

We got to see great in progress shots while they fixed the poorly patched section of the floor in the master bedroom.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

Along with many great before...

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

...and after sanding shots, like these of the master bathroom. 

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

Every time he'd put up a new photo one of us would see it and would call the other.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

Our phone calls would go something like this: "Did you see the latest photo of the floors?!?! They look so good!!!" Then the other would respond, "Hold on, let me go look...OOOOOHHHHHHHH...THEY LOOK SO GOOD!!!!" And it would repeat, over and over.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

While the progress photos of the sanding were a lot of fun to see...

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

...the real excitement started when he was applying the finish.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

We got to see so many great photos of the floor that we felt comfortable with what we were going to be coming home to when we actually saw it in person.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

But the single coolest photo that Roland shared from his time working in our home was one of a neighborhood visitor.

Photo Credit: Royal Oaks Flooring

Apparently one of our neighbors has an adventurous pig that likes to leave his yard and visit ours. 

We've never met him as he'd never visited while we were there, but I've seen him in our yard since. I can tell you that this pig is very shy, snorts a lot, and is very, very, very fast. If Lulu ever sees him, I'm pretty sure she might have a hard time keeping up with him.

Watching the progress and living vicariously through Instagram and Facebook while Roland worked on our house was a ton of fun. But it was nothing compared to being able to see it in person. 

Everything turned out so good and the look is exactly what we were hoping for. And the very low VOC nature of the finish meant there was essentially no smell.

The patches Roland made were really well done and he used tight grain heart pine to make sure everything blended really well. Remember the large square hole in the floor where there used to be a chimney and a piece of plywood used to sit?

Yeah, neither do I!

There are a few sections of wood that look to have been patched in the early 1990s with new growth yellow pine instead of heart pine. You can see it in the photo of the sanded kitchen floor above. While it was hard to notice with the previous darker finish, with the clear finish applied the patches really stand out. This is especially apparent in the kitchen...

...And in the upstairs hallway.

In many ways I want to just chalk it up to the fact that the house is over 100 years old and it's a very old floors. Wendy doesn't agree with my assessment, and it's driving her absolutely nuts. Knowing we want to renovate the kitchen at some point in the (way distant) future, we've decided to leave it as is and will likely patch it in with some reclaimed old growth heart pine at that time. That's another great aspect of the finish we chose. Since there's no color and no stain, matching in a new section in the future don't be impossible. 

In the end, the finish we went with was a very transparent sealer called Pallmann X-325 and three coats of the water based Pallmann X-96 in matte. It gave the wood the informal and "beachy" color we were going for without turning it too yellow or orange. It also really let the character and imperfections of the wood become as aspect of the wood, rather than something we were trying to cover up. 

Now that the floors have been refinished, the HVAC installed and working wonderfully (I'll surely be talking a lot about geothermal in the coming weeks as the weather gets colder), and we're almost at the final inspection point for plumbing, our house that's been a giant and never ending project since February is starting to resemble a house people can maybe, just maybe, enjoy themselves. And it only took us nine months to get to this point. Now excuse me while Wendy throws stuff at me for the last thing I just said.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, that's for sure. Beyond the various projects, we're essentially moving into the house again. But I can't tell you how happy we are that we're finally to a point where we'll once again have a bed, working bathrooms, and a comfortable to enjoy this great old house. Having the floors refinished makes the whole house feel like it's transformed. Now we're looking forward to getting each room into shape and making the whole house feel as fresh and restored as these beautiful floors!

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A few weeks ago we told you about our heated debate involving just how we'd ultimately refinish our new home's nearly 110 year old antique heart pine floors. We didn't want to go the old stain and poly route and we were assessing at all of our various options to achieve the look we wanted. 

If there's one thing you might know about us, it's our mutual understanding that this isn't a matter to be taken lightly. (We take our antique floors perhaps a bit too seriously.) What we do now will set the tone for our home for many years to come. What's more, what we do now will have a lasting impact on these beautiful floors, so we'd better make the right choices now for the sake of the floor's future. 

Well, after going over all of our various options and doing a ton of research, our wheels were spinning a little bit. We knew the direction we wanted to head, but we were discovering it was difficult to find a contractor that was familiar with and wanted to work with some of the newer approaches to refinishing. In steps fate.

While spending a bunch of time on Instagram I stumbled across the account of wood floor refinishing company called Royal Oaks Flooring that is working down the street from us on a beautiful old home in Old Town. As I looked at some of their other photos I saw several newer techniques in use that we had been researching, including a photo that looked a lot like what Wendy wants our floors to be one day. 

As a result I sent them a message to see if they'd be interested in working with us on our home. A few days later I met Roland at our house to give him a tour and show him what we were interested in doing. Can I tell you, I wanted to work with him almost as soon as I met him.

Roland is dedicated to his craft and seems to really like the work he's doing. He knows how to work with old floors and material, knows how to respect the character of old houses, and knows how to make things look good. We talked about the portions of the floor that would need to be repaired vs the things we'd leave put. Pretty much we just came up with a game plan for how he should tackle the whole thing. 

After we agreed on a start date I had my tasks ahead of me that I'd need to accomplish before he could get moving. This included a few more holes to plug in the corner of the living room....

...and a suitable patch for a particularly nasty looking section of floor where radiator pipes used to run.

I spent last weekend getting everything I could ready for him to start at the beginning of this week. I'll tell you one thing for sure, getting a house ready to have the floors refinished is a serious pain...even if you don't really even have anything in the house in the first place. 

For the floor patch I ended up using my cordless oscillating Sonicrafter, a chisel, and a whole lot of time to turn that horrible looking plywood and chewed up hole patch into something a little worse at first.

Then to something that was more of what I had in mind. 

The idea here was to use some of the spare pieces I had to cut a patch piece to fit right into the opening but sit on the edges of the old floor. That way it could support weight on it without much support from below. So I cut the piece we'd eventually use to patch...

...then marked the back of the piece so I could cut out the back of it on the table saw dado blade. It may not be perfect with the lines of the floor, but this is a floor that's already full of character, so why not just a little bit more?

Beyond the patch and plug I spent the whole day on Sunday moving the little stuff we had out of the rooms and covering them in plastic so that Roland could sand. He dropped by on Sunday to test sand a section of one room and even helped me move the couch out on the porch, since it won't fit through any of the doors to non wood floor rooms.

I ended up wrapping the whole thing up in plastic where it will live until the floors are ready for it again.

I even had to take apart the cabinets in what we're calling the "Hobbit Room" and put all of them on the porch as well. It was a ton of work and a long day filled with moving things.

Before Roland could start on the floors there were a few repair items I took care of. I mentioned the two holes, but there was also a large square cutout area in the upstairs back room where a chimney once stood. That hole has had a stained piece of plywood sitting on top of it since we bought the house. Rather than leave it like that, I put a little support bracing in place so that Roland could patch the the hole and make it sort of disappear. 

Roland started sanding on Tuesday and we paid him a visit on Wednesday to see some of the progress. When we started looking around our jaws almost hit the floor. Simply from sanding the floors had instantly transformed the house. And that large square patch above? Yeah, I could barely even tell where it was.

Roland and his guys were furiously scraping, sanding, patching, and repairing all over the house. 

Walking from room to room Wendy and I both felt like it was practically a new place. It's amazing what changing the color of the floors will do.

The worst patched job area in the house was in our master bedroom. When the original wall was removed back in the 1990s and the old fireplace taken out, the floor was patched very poorly. Roland and his guys were taking up this bad patch and weaving in new pieces of heart pine to make the room feel correct once again.

And my personal favorite part of the job, the sanding of the stair treads. The stairs are often the real soul of an old house, and seeing these stairs starting to come back to life was simply fulfilling.

At this point we know Roland has finished sanding and has applied the first coats of finish, but we've not seen it throughout the house yet. We really can't wait to see how it all looks. However, we did see a sample of the finish we chose in the back "Hobbit Room" of the house. Keep in mind, this is a slightly different wood than the rest of the house, but we're pretty thrilled with how it's looking.

What do you think? Can you see our vision? This sample is without any sort of top coat, but it gives you an idea of the beauty of heart pine almost completely on its own. I know a lot of people prefer a dark floor to the lighter look, but with this house, these floors, and the more informal feel Wendy is going for, this seems perfect to us.

Roland should be done with everything next week and I absolutely cannot wait to give you our next update. Those photos will really show how this project has transformed the house!

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Our debates are not of the GOP variety, but rather about our various options for refinishing our antique pine floors. We've been looking at our various options for breathing a little life into these beautiful floors pretty much since we bought the house almost exactly a year ago. But the actual job of refinishing the floors has had to wait due in equal parts to the HVAC/plumbing disaster back in February, and to our inability to make a final decision.

The floors in our new house are beautiful antique flat sawn random width clear pine. They appear to be a mixture of heart and southern yellow pine, and almost all of it, save for a few areas of repair patches, are original to the home.

While we both quickly agreed that we didn't want to do the good old stain and poly refinish route, given that our floors in Old Town have a much more formal look than we're going for and have really started to show their age as the poly has flaked and fractured in places, just what route we wanted to go is still up in the air.

In debate number one back in June, we shared some of our original thoughts on using the very historically traditional floor finish of Waterlox (100 year old recipe of ting oil and resin). Though the tung oil finish is historically appropriate for our 107 year old floors, the sample boards we applied it to showed us just how yellow and orange the floors would likely look. (And many of you echoed our fears in the comments.)

We're talking Trump, walking wind blown from the back nine, in Florida orange and yellow. While this is great for a lot of historic pine floors, the decor styles Wendy has been focusing on for this house is far more white and far less amber. Think lots of neutral colors with aqua accents, casual fabrics, and a number of antiques and second hand furniture thrown into the mix. So I lost debate one and we kept looking for a better solution.

After licking my wounds of failure following my test patches of Waterlox, I started researching the looks Wendy has been pinning, and some modern approaches to historic floor refinishing that might be able to achieve that look. Through all of my research the thing that I really started to understand is that there's just no single solution that will work for every floor. I now understand the most important thing about choosing a method to refinish your floor:

A floor finish should be based on the aesthetic, maintenance, and price you're comfortable with for your floors, not simply what the contractor you're hiring is most comfortable with applying. It's important to find the product you want to use first, then find the contractor that wants to work with you on the approach you're interested in. If you have a contractor that can't accommodate you, you have a contractor you don't want to work with.

So the hunt was on for a product that is what we want, and for the contractor who is expert in applying it.

I started by sanding down a few spare boards we have in order to test out various solutions I'd been researching. The board on the left is the current color of the floor, and if you look closely you can see the swirl marks and bad stain job all over the board from the last time it was refinished back in the early 1990s. It's due to be refinished again.

During my research one of the products I saw mentioned quite often is the one coat application solution of Rubio Monocoat. Knowing that photos of flooring that isn't similar to ours can't do it justice, I ordered a few of their sample applicator bottles in various colors to give it a go.

It's a single coat no VOC oil based application that can color the wood as it stains. It leaves a very matte finish and has a track record of excellent wear with no need to re-coat for as many as 20 years.

The other real draw of the Rubio product is the fact you can spot correct scratches. Since it's a single coat oil application, you just apply the finish to the floor where he scratch or damage has occurred, then wipe away the excess. The unscathed wood will not accept new oil, only the exposed fibers will grab the oil and will be treated with the product. This sounds perfect for dog nail scratches, which we're sure to have. Over time the floor builds a patina that's more akin to what you're likely see in historic floors, rather than the somewhat plastic look of traditional polyurethane.

After doing a ton of research on the many colors available, I decided on trying out "Natural" color and a few of their 5% colors, like White 5%, Smoke 5%, and Mist 5%. The idea here is to only slightly tint the wood and to allow the beauty of the wood's grain to do the real work, rather than applying the full color to mask the wood. I mean, just look at the array of colors Rubio offers.

Photo Credit: woodlife-flooring.com

As I applied the oil in sections I followed the instructions. I had high hopes this would be the silver bullet for our floor refinishing woes and that I'd be able to claim the debate crown in floor debate number two.

I'd read that the Rubio solution is great for newer wood, but the tighter grain of hard old growth wood (even old soft wood is hard), sometimes doesn't accept the oil the way it really needs to.

After applying the oil and allowing the necessary dry time we took a look at the finished results.

As I nervously unveiled it to Wendy, my heart of hearts knew it wasn't meant to be. It wasn't yellow or overly glossy like the Waterlox, and certainly didn't look plastic or glossy like stain and poly, it was simply too matte, too subtle, too murky. 

I knew right away this wasn't the solution for our house. I'm sure under the right conditions, wood species, decor choices, etc. that this would be an awesome solution. But for our house I agree with Wendy, it just won't work. This sample board helped us realize that we both want something more subtle than gloss poly, but more significant than an oil/wax finish that Rubio offers. We're looking for something that's a good middle ground. Somethings juuust riiiiiight.

The good news is that I've got a good lead on another option that I'll share with you for debate number three. It's sure to be much sooner than the gap between one and two, but that's primarily because we're really moving on the floor refinishing now and want to make sure it gets done sooner than later. Who knows, maybe I'll come away from this next one victorious? But as we all know, only time will tell who happens to be leading in any given poll after each debate.

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