Small Home Gazette, Winter 2019
Diamond (blades) Really Are a Girl’s Best Friend
The refinished floor in the living room.
Persistence is sometimes a virtue when you are launching a do-it-yourself project, especially when the going gets tough halfway through. And sometimes discovering the right tool helps you remember you need your brain as well as your brawn. Who among us hasn’t experienced a project that felt like a do-or-die battle?
I think my sister-in-law, Kay Tischler, had reached that point two years ago. She was in the midst of a floor-refinishing project when the house threw her a curve. She owns a 1914 bungalow in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and had dreamed of pulling up the carpet in her living and dining rooms to reveal the hardwood floors. To spread out the costs and save money, she decided to do one room a year and get the floor ready for sanding herself before bringing in a floor refinisher. Sounds like a good plan, right?
Persistence Pays Off…
Kay attacked the living room first. The carpet came up easily, and her non-chemical approach of mayonnaise, moist towels and elbow grease removed the gray glue from the wood surface. (Mayo? Strange, I know, but it worked!) It was difficult work, and she did have an oily film to deal with, but Kay was channeling her “persistent” attitude throughout the project. The floor refinisher came in and made the living room look beautiful.
…Until It Doesn’t
At least three or four layers of glue and a mystery black tar made this homeowner’s floor refinishing project difficult.
So, the next year Kay started in the dining room with confidence and determination. She would soon discover that this room had lived a very different life.
Peeling back the carpet, Kay discovered two to three additional layers of unknown residue hiding under the gray glue she had found in the living room. “It was like black tar under maybe two layers of glue beneath a congealed and dried layer of carpet fibers,” Kay remembers. Undaunted, she applied her arsenal of tools that had worked the year before: mayo, towels, elbow grease, and persistence.
After a few nights of one-inch-at-a-time victory in her war against the layers, Kay was at her wits end. Her floor refinisher didn’t want to risk gumming up his expensive sanders in an effort to remove the residues, which he had seen before in other local houses. My wife, Gail, suggested a call to Kaydee Macey at Pete’s Hardwood Floors in St. Paul. (Kaydee is available for phone consultations at an affordable price.) Kay’s conversation with Kaydee led to a recommendation of a new weapon: a tool called Diamabrush that attaches to a sander. Its aggressively angled metal blades would make any stubborn residue quake in fear.
Whirling Dervish
The Diamabrush in action.
Kay’s professional refinisher was skeptical—worried that these spinning diamond-tipped blades might damage the floor or wear down so quickly that new blades would be required to complete the project. But, he decided to give this new tool a whirl. In no time at all, the black tar, glue and carpet residue had surrendered, and the floor was ready for sanding. The tool didn’t gouge the wood floor, and it still had plenty of life left for the floor refinisher’s next project after Kay’s house.
The finished floors look wonderful. Because the floors were refinished in successive years, the homeowner decided to go without a stain in a bid to obscure the line between the two rooms.
“The floors look great,” Kay says with more than a hint of personal victory in her voice. “Finding that tool made all the difference, and the extra step of using the Diamabrush tool didn’t cost me much more.”
Persistence is good for many do-it-yourself projects. And using the right tool can lead to success. Okay, I’m off to battle a drippy faucet…
Resources
Pete’s Hardwood Floors
186 Fairview Ave. N., St. Paul
651-698-5888
peteshardwoodfloors.com
