Our first days on this remodel have been almost entirely taken up with refinishing the abused and neglected hardwood floors. (That and shopping for supplies. Already too many trips to hardware stores to recall.)

Here is how they started. Bad Floors!

Basically they were covered in a thick layer of carpet glue.

Wanting to find a non-toxic, non-miserable method, we first tried this tile steamer technique:

And it was too slow-going. This little area took more than 10 minutes, and the little brush on the end of the steamer wand was shot.

So we tried a non-toxic citrus solvent:

But we didn’t have any luck with that, either, despite trying to let it sit for an hour as some sources advise.

So we got some conventional floor stripper and some really thick gloves.

Ew check out that sludge:

Andrew devised a system of using kitty litter on the sludge to make it easier to scoop up and dispose of and also to keep it from re-adhering to the floor as it dried.

The stripper + mineral spirits + kitty littler system seemed to be working really well when we compared the stripped area to the non-stripped area:

Yet a day-and-a-half of soaking and scraping sludge proved insufficient. We rented a heavy-duty floor sander to see if the remaining smattering of adhesive could be tackled by high-grit sanding pads, but no dice. So we went over the whole thing a second time. And I can’t quite overstate how gross it was working with the chemicals. If they splattered our skin it burned, and despite wearing masks our mouths started to go numb.

But after the second striping, the sander worked without problems:

And then we were finally ready for Tung Oil, which both stains and seals wood. It’s completely natural, and smells like hazelnuts—a welcome change.

It requires 5-7 coats on the first day, with 40 minutes between coats for curing. I suppose there are many ways to pass those forty minute stretches (cleaning, organizing tools, blogging, fixing leaks, making to-do lists), but we especially recommend Chinese food and Game of Thrones: