Friday, November 16, 2018

Progress Report Week 20: Shellac and Floors

This week I have spent a lot of time on y hands and knees scrubbing floors! But all that work is beginning to pay off, look how good the floors look! This is the back bedroom and it had a six inch wide swath of some sort of carpet glue stuck to the floor. A little elbow grease and denatured alcohol and wa-la!

The front bedroom has already been scrubbed and is waiting for a new coat (or two!) of shellac.

I ordered 5 lbs. of shellac "buttons" from shellac.net. Hopefully it will be enough! The buttons are kind of fun to handle. I weighed them out into 1/2 lb. baggies to make is easier to mix up a batch. You can mix the shellac and denatured alcohol in varying strengths, but a 1/2 lb. shellac to 1 quart alcohol is a standard starting point. The shellac will have to soak for 24-36 hours until completely dissolved. I am not sure if we will be ready to apply it this weekend, but I thought I would get a head start just in case!

 I just started washing down the middle bedroom and as you can see, it is in pretty rough shape!

One corner done! You can see the difference though; on the right- freshly scrubbed, left-unwashed. I use a scot-brite sponge with the green scrubby back and a small scraper for the thicker paint splatters (and the carpet glue!). 

 Other exciting progress, is the kitchen cabinet hardware! Mandy and I decided to give it a go last night. Love how nice it makes the cabinets look! (If you ever decide to add cabinet hardware, a template makes the hole drilling process go super fast! We used a piece of cardboard with the hole spacing marked on it, then we would line it up with the edge of the cupboard and drill.)

We also got the kitchen sink drain plumbed in! And doesn't the kitchen look immensely better with the white fridge? 

2 comments:

  1. Wow! I wish I'd known your trick for wood floors for our Iowa house. But so happy to know it now. Thanks for sharing. Your hard work is paying off in spades. Good job!

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  2. My goodness what a difference the floors are. All your hard work is paying off.

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