Wood Floor Revival

Hi friends. So we've had our new home for just over a week and we have the biggest project done. The floors upstairs are refinished and cat free! Here's how we did it:

(Ok, so actually, I said "we" but what I meant was James, my parents, Andy, and Hugh. My ankles swelled up when I was up there for, like, two minutes, so I stayed downstairs and worked on other projects.)

First they removed all the carpet, padding, and strips around the walls. The wood underneath looked like this. Those black stains are cat pee. Apparently the cats that lived here were "prize cats" so I guess that means the whole world is their toilet or something.

James did some research online and talked to a couple guys who had refinished cat destroyed floors and he ended up getting an enzyme called "Urine Off" which is essentially a spray form of a specific type of bacteria that adheres to and eats away all the pet stain. So he sprayed all the spots, covered it up to let it work, and then scraped the enzyme and the stain together from the floor. The above picture shows the floor after that process had been complete.

The next thing to do was sand the floor. James rented a sander from some place up the street and the men used three different grades of sandpaper, starting with the rougher and moving to finer until all the floors were stain free and smooth. James used a hand sander around the edges. As you can see, this step removed the stains leftover after the enzyme. At this point, the cat pee smell was pretty much gone, too, which is excellent.

Last they put down two layers of poly, nice and thick. We've been letting them sit for a few days, but soon it'll be safe to start moving into these rooms. The poly smell has decreased quite a bit in the last couple days, too, which makes living in those rooms all the more enjoyable.

Also, I built a garden on the east side of the house:

The front row is marigolds to hopefully keep away the bunnies, and the back row is vegetables and a couple herbs. Here's hoping they grow!

Alright, have a great rest of the week, I'll update more soon!