I am redoing my question about refinishing/repainting a porch floor and hoping to include a few pictures. The porch floor is not totally decrepit as I may have mistakenly led Sphere to believe on my earlier post. I’m including an edge picture, a frontal picture, an underneath picture, and a standing and looking down at it shot.
The house is around a 100 years old and we have no idea how many times the floors have been painted. This is a small dining room porch (ie…”learn on this one”, the front porch, which also needs to be done is a lot bigger). We have noticed that on all 3 porches, the long board edge and the cut board edge which handle the water run-off are in sad shape. The pitch is still intact, it is just that the current paint job needs redone.
So, my original question was a guide on redoing the floor. I don’t think it needs to be gutted. The edges need some repair work and on the “standing looking down” shot, the part with the lighter colored paint is a little spongy, but couldn’t I just replace a few boards and keep the rest? The steps I’m thinking of (experts please step-in here!) are: clean with a bleach solution, sand down to new wood, apply wood permanizer, caulk between the tongue in groove boards?, coat with ext. primer, paint with oil enamel paint, be happy one thing is off the project list.
So…I’m open to suggestions and remember, we’re new at this. Thanks!
Replies
Looks like it would be easier to just replace the floor rather than try to save what you have.
Check out some of the dense, rot resistant brazilian woods such as ipe.
Mike K
Amateur Home Remodeler in Aurora, Illinois
In general I think if the floor is solid (that's your call), you can save most of it. CAn't really tell if the joists are 2x4 or bigger. Bigger would definitely be better. A couple of thoughts - I wouldn't bother with bleach; I would get a regular upright floor sanding machine with relatively rough grit paper to get rid of the old paint; I would use a deck enamel which is made for floors - not just any oil base paint, and put down primer first. I would not caulk any seams between the boards but would pull up and replace any bad ones. I'm not sure what you call permanizer. If you mean "Woodlife" or some such, no problem there but check to see how it works with the paint first. You have a few hours/days work there but it will look a whole lot different when you are done.
One thing to remember is modern floorboards may or may not be the same dimensions as what you have there now. My next door neighbor replaced a few boards on his 90 year old porch last summer, and had a heck of a time making the new boards match up because they weren't as thick. He had to do a bunch of shimming under the new ones and sanding on the adjacent old ones to get them close; after a coat of paint it looks okay, but it didn't turn out as nice as he hoped.
I have done some restoration work, and to me your porch is entirely salvageable (and personally, I'd do what I could to keep it)...Here's my suggested approach:
1. Strip ALL the paint using a mechanical paint stripper like the Metabo paint remover, or use a heat gun...This house will have lead paint so protect yourself...
2. Shore up any structural issues.
3. Once the paint is stripped take a dremel tool and remove all the "punky" soft wood.
4. Replace any completely rotted boards.
5. Apply as much penetrating epoxy sealer as the wood will take (both sides would be preferable)--you may wish to check out Smith & Co. CPES (Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer).
6. If you are going to repaint, fill voids with an epoxy filler (again Smith & Co. "filler" is a good product). If you are not going to re-paint, then you'll either need to leave it "rough" or find a filler that matches (again S&Co. may be able to help).
7. Sand down the epoxy.
8. Either apply a 2 part epoxy paint (and then top coat with a good floor paint) or use a 2 part polyurethane (S&Co. has a great poly).
A word of caution--these products are not cheap, the labor hard, but I think the end result is that you have kept the historic integrity intact, provided a great finish, and the end result will look like it belongs to this older home.
Good luck...
Rip it out and use the salvage boards to replace the rotten ones on the more prominent porches if you like. IPE should "patina down" in 6 months.
Save your energy for scraping and sanding the railings and ballusters :~)
ymmv
The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
- Fyodor Dostoyevski
Thanks for all the tips! I'm going to strip it down and see what the wood looks like underneath all the paint. And, I am not looking forward to the rails! ;)