120 Year old Doug Fir: Lightening & Refinishing-HELP!
Lisa Britz
3 years ago
Hi! We are about to refinish our 120 year old Douglas Fir Floors. They are currently painted a dark grey/brown. I'd like to make them a light Scandi floors with a very subtle whitewash. The quotes I've gotten are all over the place from $4/sqft all the way up to $17/sqft for the work. I'd love some advice on what products are best on these floors and how to achieve the look I want. I've looked into WOCA/ Bona Nordic Seal. Contractors seem very scared to touch the floors given the age. Help appreciated!
This is the look I'd like.. light floors. Other picture is current flooring.
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Comments (22)
PROJoseph Corlett, LLC
3 years ago
PROPatricia Colwell Consulting
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agoRelated Discussions
fir floors
Comments (22)This post is old, but I too have old Douglas Fir flooring that we just refinished in our 1940's house. Our Fir is in the Dining Room, hallway and downstairs bedroom. We did the hallway a few years ago - the DR and hall had carpet over bright orange tiles that were tarred down by a previous owner in the 1960's. We used paint stripper to remove the tar and then sanded the floor (hand sander in the hall years ago; a rented stand-up belt sander in the DR). Most floor refinishers REFUSED to sand down the tar, so we did it ourselves. It left a lot of stains, and in the DR there were also stains from pet accidents over the years and stains left from the carpet tacks. We stained it English Chestnut and then Tung Oiled it (8 coats). I think the hallway only had one coat of stain, but the dogs' claws scuffed it really bad over the years, and since the DR was so badly stained in spots, I just second-coated the stain and am currently waiting for it to dry - the stains are hardly noticeable now. When we expanded the house the idiots broke the first two planks of Fir when they put in the header between the new kitchen and Dining Room (when I went nuts yelling at them they said "You are going to replace this ugly old floor, aren't you?" My reply: "Are you NUTS?!?! This floor is irreplaceable!") and so we had to get three new planks, and luckily our local lumberyard carries a lot of traditional building supplies like rough-sawn siding, and they actually carried Douglas Fir flooring in many different widths! None of the flooring places carried it. The three new planks fit the t&g, but they were a lot lower than the old, so the old was sanded down to match the height. The new planks also are going to take AT LEAST one extra coat of stain to be equally dark (old wood always absorbs more finish than new wood). I like the Fir natural, but the stains on mine were just awful. Also, it meets up with the new Sassafrass in the kitchen / family room, and that is a similar color to the natural Fir, but a totally different grain, so it would look really weird where they meet. Also, the dark floor looks really dramatic in the Dining Room. We are DEFINITELY putting a rug under the table / chairs to prevent scratches, though! As for wood floors in kitchens, we put Sassafrass in ours, and that is a fairly soft wood, but loaded with character. We have neoprene mats for in front of the sink and stove. I wouldn't personally put anything other than ceramic or porcelain or glass tile in a full bathroom though (even natural stone needs to be re-sealed every year). Athomedads, the floor in your pics is OAK! We refinished all our old oak in the entry / living room by hand sanding and 8 coats of tung Oil and they are GORGEOUS! All I can say is that having refinished both really OLD wood floors, and also finished new wood floors, I HATE NEW WOOD!!! Old wood floors sand down easily and soak up stain and / or tung oil really quickly. New wood takes WEEKS to absorb 8 coats of tung oil, and a LOT of steel wool in between. The old floors were completed in one week with 8 coats; the new took over a month! You MUST allow each coat to dry fully before the next or the entire finish is destroyed and you must sand it down and start over (TRUST ME ON THIS - I learned that the hard way - don't rush it!). As for sanding you own floors - it truly depends. Personally, I cannot handle a real floor sander (I'm a 125 pound female), but my brother rented and used the stand-up belt-sander with no problems. I would NOT trust him with one of those huge stand-up orbitals, though! On our old oak floors that just needed a light sanding, I did that myself with an orbital and it was fine. The only problem is being on your hands and knees for so long - invest in a good pair of knee pads!...See Morekitchen floor tile that looks good next to douglas fir?
Comments (7)Thank you both for your feedback. I'm leaning towards porcelain tile (to reduce maintenance), so do you mean the slate lookalikes? The variations are pretty high, and I'm concerned it will be look busy. Is there a brand/color you'd recommend? (On the island, I was thinking the island cabinet would be wood and the counter-top quartz, but not sure what brand or color.) In terms of large format, what do you mean, 18x18? (the sales woman at the tile store thought 12x12 or 13x13 better represented the period but 18x18 could work, if that's all I could find. I'm thinking the larger tiles may be less busy--fewer grout lines--and possibly a little cheaper per square foot and to install) Thanks for the feedback on the floors in the back of the house. My fir floors aren't in great shape. I haven't had a floor expert out recently, but at least one contractor wondered if there was even enough thickness to refinish them. I don't need pristine floors (or anything) and when I got a bid to refinish/replace the fir floors 20 years ago, the guy said fir doesn't refinish all that great and then ended by saying my floors look like the distressed floors people are paying to put in. So it's possible the fir may get replaced at some point. BTW, on the newer polyurethanes, one book (The New Bungalow Kitchen by Peter Labau) said to avoid high sheen (too 80s). I assume there are longer-lasting polyurethanes with lower sheen that can help retain the feeling of an older home? thanks!...See MoreHelp! Wood floor issues after they were professionally refinished.
Comments (13)I like to make analogies between my old house and an old man or woman: Getting 50 or 70 year old wood floors refinished is like bringing a middle aged person home from the hospital and giving them PT until they spring back like new. Getting 140 year old floors refinished is like bringing a 90 year old person home from the hospital and needing round the clock care and knowing you might have to call in hospice. I owned a home with 160 year old floors. The honest and good floor refinishers I spoke with told me I needed a flooring restoration professional, not just a refinisher. I got enough quotes and people to look at them that I could tell who was going to do a crappy job and who was going to turn me down because they couldn't do a great job with what was there. None of the top notch restoration pros wanted to do my medium sized home in the city as most did massive projects on gigantic historic estates out in the burbs with tremendous budgets. They were usually hired by architectural firms and contractors who specialize in this. Our floor had splinters, gouges, nails, you name it. There was not much left to be sanded and little gloss left on top. Many who came to give me a quote said it needed to be replaced, which kind of killed me, and I never had the heart to do it. Unfortunately, it took me until we were staging the house for sale to find a good solution: I had leftover milled planks of heart pine from the 1850's that I had used for our kitchen floor. A handyman used the extras to cut in patchworks to the really damaged areas. I then mixed stains to get a good color match and stained the patches myself. (Sometimes you can take flooring up from closets to make patches, but that had already been done in our house and no good closet flooring was left.) I colored in discoloration and gouges with stain pens. It was like a huge coloring book and incredibly meditative and satisfying. I purchased very large jute rugs from Facebook Marketplace that probably "fell off a truck". The colors blended well with my floors, covered the most offending markets, yet still left enough of the historic floors visable to be appreciated. After 9 years of living in a house where I had to tell guests - "Don't take off your shoes or you might get a Civil War splinter!" I was able to now be barefoot in my own home. Ultimately, your pros butchered parts of your floors. But I don't know that someone else would have done a much better job with such soft historic floors, and these folks might not be able to do any better of a job trying to repair their mistakes. And, nobody would have made them look new. You've gotta embrace imperfection when you live in a house that is so old. I feel your pain!...See MoreCan restored 100 year old fir doors be made to look less orange?
Comments (11)@User. I get that I can't change the basic color of the wood. What I want to do..,if it's possible and reasonable....is add an appropriate wood dye (water based or oil based) few drops of a blue/grey to the clear finish coat to offset some of the orange tones in the wood itself. Since blue is the complement to orange, it SHOULD make it appear to be a bit less obviously orange and a bit more grey/brown, It's sort of the same principle as women with white or silver hair that add a touch of blue/purple shampoo to offset any brassy/yellowish tones in their hair and make it appear more brilliant white or shiny grey/silver. It doesn't really dye the hair, it's just a surface coat. The thing is the guy who is restoring my old doors is rather old fashioned AND we have a bit of a language problem (He's Italian, my Italian is as yet almost nonexistent) and before I go pushing this on him, I want to ensure it's actually a sound plan!...See Morebtydrvn
3 years agobtydrvn
3 years agoSJ McCarthy
3 years agoLisa Britz
3 years agoLisa Britz
3 years agoLisa Britz
3 years agoSJ McCarthy
3 years agoLisa Britz
3 years agoThe flooring refinishing is coming along! Look at this transformation. The Doug Fir floors are in pretty good shape and cant wait to see the finished product!
Me PRN
3 years agoLisa Britz
3 years agoImage update-the stairs are half way sanded. We came upon an issue in the back bedroom and need to replace the boards in that one room only. Where can I get 5-1/8" Doug fir boards in long lengths? Has anyone purchased from dougfirflooring.com? Is there another source you'd recommend near the Bay Area?
hxwxd
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agohxwxd
3 years agoLisa Britz
2 years agoveronicaalm
2 years ago
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Lisa BritzOriginal Author