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REFINISHING FLOORS- 2 (mastic problems) so underneath my 2nd floor kitchen's green-and-gold linoleum is another layer of linoleum, that one gray with multitudinous little primary-colored shapes. under *that* is a layer of gooey, gluey, sticky mastic, and under *that* is what i think is a nice fir floor, apparently in okay condition. i want the wood floor back, if it can be arranged without too much sturm und drang :) questions are: whee, -vicka There are pros who can take care of this for you. Ben (a fellow ham) is one; he fixed Craig Hagan's floors after another floor man totally screwed them up. Craig seemed pleased at the results. I'll try to get his number for you. -Crash Sanding mastic is probably a lose, as it will clog up the sandpaper. Katya did a similar floor by dint of lots of elbow grease and a scraper (You can use one of those heavy-duty j-shaped paint scrapers and lean on it. yes, it's hard work.) Then you rent the big rotary sander, which is a bit tricky too but kind of fun... There may be contractors willing to do this for the right price, but i don't know any offhand, except our existing favorites :) --Lizm Welcome to the wonderful world of old wood floors! >1. is there some professional-type person y'all know of who'll do this? No, I did similar stuff myself before we moved in to our current house. >2. how does one get mastic off wood floors? does one? We used a wallpaper steamer, a standard paint scraping type handtool, and lots of newspapers and rags. If the mastic you have is the same blackish gooey stuff that we had on our floors, then it will dissolve Despot, or you can borrow ours) speeds up the dissolving process. It is still extremely messy and annoying. I recommend a VOC filter mask for doing this as it stank to high heaven. > 3. how ghastly is it to sand one's own floors? will that get through the layer of mastic? The mastic will just gum up the sandpaper in seconds. You have to get rid of it before you sand. The sanding isn't too bad. For one normal sized room, it will basically be one day of work which is mostly prep, fiddling, and clean up, and a few hours of hard manual labor (actually pulling the sander around). One other caveat: I found it to be hard on the lower back. If you have back problems, I'd recommend paying someone else. axprr (why does Apple insist on putting the little dots on the K & D instead of the J and F like everyone else???) -jstuart > 2. how does one get mastic off wood floors? does one? I was going to suggest a heat gun in combination with a scraper (sorta like a hair dryer on steroids -- in fact, try a hairdryer first to see if it works). But try water or the steamer first, as Scott recommends, that seems easier. Modern mastics aren't water soluble. I'd recommend trying a small patch and sanding too, to check if the mastic stained the wood. PeterO's house has a staircase with treads that still look a little green from (reportedly) having had mastic & linoleum on them. It's _very_ easy to screw up a floor, esp. softwood (i.e. fir), by running the sander too long in one place. The couple that run the Heartwood owner-builders school said the only thing they contracted out in their own house (a lovely, though probably still incomplete :-), timber-frame affair) was the sanding of the cherry floors. They wanted someone else to be responsible if it got screwed up. The cherry kitchen floor had about 10 coats of polyurethane, btw, which seemed like a good idea. Also, for a kitchen, it's good to have a reasonably watertight floor. How tight is the old fir flooring? Would it be worth tearing it up and putting in new tight t-n-g boards or parquet? For that matter, you could carefully tear up the fir planks and flip them over. This is probably more work than scraping, tho, and you'd still have to sand to get it even. BTW, I'm getting fir 1x4's for the front porch, and the best price I found by far is $.75 / linear foot. That's about $2.25/sf, so it's worth saving! -- Larry > Also, for a kitchen, it's good to have a reasonably watertight
floor. How Depends on how you do it. Wood *always* moves. The top of a house can move as much as an inch in height over a season of humidity changes. If you pack the floor in so tightly that it can't move, then increasing humidity will crush the cells of the wood, and when they dry out, they'll be smaller. That's where the gaps in old wood floors come from. --russ Have identical situation in my pantry. Have done nothing so far- throw rug covers mastic, which in our case is so old it is not sticky anymore, although still tenatously (sp?) stuck to floor. Several floor finishing people have said they can sand down to good wood, but are not interested in doing such a small job. Keep me posted if you find any other solutions. -h |
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