Almost Dreamy- Hardwood Floors!

We were very excited to find out that under the carpeting in the three bedrooms in the home was hardwood floor. We did not discover that until we took possession of the home and tore out the carperting! What a beautiful surprise. Almost. 

Who puts carpeting over hardwood floors???

Crazy people. That's who. Here's why: 

 small room 1. This is truly the worst of the rooms. The spots where the carpet padding adhered to the floor were much larger than in the other two rooms. And it covered most of the floor space.

 small room 1 again. This is amidst all my attempts to get it clean. I think I had spent about 8 hours trying different methods. 

 I couldn't find a better picture of this room at the moment, but this was the second worst of the three rooms. The spots were not as big. about dime to a quarter sized spots that covered a majority of the floor. 

 It was the best of the three rooms. The spots were dime sized or small and only on parts of the floor that must have been the walkway around their bed.

We rented a floor belt sander from the local hardware store. My mom and dad helped with a couple of hand sanders to get closer to the edges and in the closets. We went through a lot of sand paper! More than typical because we found that truly nothing else would get the remnants of the carpet padding that adhered over time to the hardwood. We tried Murphy oil soap with very hot water, mineral spirits, and 100% acetone cut with a bit of water. NOTHING was working. The acetone just seemed to make an even bigger mess. Hand scraping it would have taken forever, and we didn't want to take too much of the floor away with an industrial wood floor scrapper that we'd hear about. So... we just lots and lots of sand paper.

 We used Minwax Wood Finish Golden Oak 210B stain. It did leave us with a slightly more "orange" appearance than we would have preferred, but it makes well with the existing trim (which we may change later). Oh well. Lesson learned. Although, I am happy with how dark it make the grain.

 We used Minwax fast drying oil based polyurethane in Clear Satin Finish. We used a foam roller that came suggested by the guy who helped me at the hardware store. Tom was rather unhappy with the results after three coats. It applied the oil poly too thick and teeny tiny bubbles can be felt with your hand and seen if you are close to the floor. I think they look great, and have to be refinished to maintain them anyway so I see no problem. Another lesson learned. Tom has finished wood floors in the past with moleskin cloth and we will be doing that in the future when we have to refinish them. I also wonder if a water based poly would have lessened the "orange" appearance. Can you do a water poly over an oil poly?