The Floor

If you look at pictures of the real-life library, the floorboards are quite narrow—I’m guessing 2-3” wide.  I therefore chose 1/8” x 1/32” cherry wood strips from Northeast Lumber for my floor.  According to the restoration documentation, the library floor was finished with orange shellac.  I don’t have any of that, but I mixed golden oak and red mahogany Minwax stains, which I thought gave the wood a nice, warm color.  As always, it is critical to stain before gluing.  Once glue gets on wood, the stain just won’t take.

The strips are 24” long, so I cut them into 4” (8’) lengths.  I based the length on the floorboards in our 1925 home with similar flooring.  Midway through the process, my little chop saw stopped working.  I have no idea why.  I can’t imagine the wood was too much for it.  The only thing I can think of is that it wasn’t getting much rest between cuts, so it overheated?  In any event, nothing I tried would bring it back to life, so I finished cutting my strips with my old-fashioned miter-box and razor saw.  Hey, it worked.

I first made a template of the floor from card stock.  I prefer to glue the wood to a template, and then glue the template to the floor.  That way, there is no problem reaching difficult spots, seeing what I’m doing, or sanding the finished floor.  Also, if I’m not happy with a board, it’s much, much easier to pull it off the paper than the wood base of the room box (and, yes, I did have to do that a couple of times).  I did put the template in place while doing the front edge of the perimeter rows, so that I could make sure they were nice and flush with the foundation.  Then it was a tedious process of making my way around five times for the “frame,” and then filling in with strips. You can see that the wood doesn’t come quite to the walls on two sides.  I have left channels for the wires of the lamps.  They’ll be covered with baseboard and/or bookcases, so you won’t see them when I’m done.  Neither the fireplace nor the bookcase are glued in in this picture.  They are just there for checking dimensions.

I finished the wood with three coats of clear shellac, using 0000 steel wool in between and after my final coat had dried.  I filled in a little egg carton “tile” in front of the fireplace and, finally, added my sandpaper brick hearth, before gluing the entire thing down with Yes paste.

I am very pleased with the way the floor turned out.  You can see I also decided to stain and varnish the “foundation.”  I decided I liked the look with the wood floor. 

Note:  As you may have noticed in my previous post as well, the interior of the fireplace changed.  The spouse took one look at the fireplace (pre-gluing, fortunately), and said, “You can’t have a floor and fireplace that look this nice and that two-dimensional interior.”  So the printed back was replaced with more sandpaper brick.