Article Title: Wandering and Wondering: Sanding the Old Floorboards

Edition: April 2002
Category: Horizons
Author: Dave Keller
Article:

As a novice homeowner, I am learning that there are three kinds of home improvement projects: projects I can do on my own; projects that require professional attention; and projects which no sane person should ever attempt.

In the year and a half that we'd lived in our house, Emily and I had routinely discussed pulling up the carpets and linoleum to refinish the wood floors hidden below. Nothing like wood floors, we told ourselves. Naturally beautiful and all that. Well, let me tell you, there is very little that is natural about refinishing old floorboards.

First you have to find them. If your house is old enough, it's a pretty sure bet that there is wood somewhere under whatever surface you are walking on. How far below, of course, is the real question. In our living room, the answer was fairly easy: pull up the stained shag carpet, remove the strips of carpet tacks from the perimeter, and then crowbar your way through a 1/3 inch layer of plywood-like "Lauan." You are now standing on spruce floorboards which appear never to have been finished, let alone walked upon. Perhaps the original owners, back in 1910, had just covered them up with rugs as soon as the house was completed. In any case, with a little help from a drum sander and an edger, the boards should shape up easily.

The kitchen, it turns out, is a different beast altogether. For one thing, linoleum is not easy to remove. Rubbery tough, and stapled in hundreds of spots to the Lauan below, it doesn't respond well to the crowbar. Even using an array of cutting tools, the linoleum resists. I bet that a caveperson with a stone implement would find it easier to strip the hide from a woolly mammoth. After much wrangling though, I finally am able to dig though the linoleum and lauan. And what lies below? More linoleum.

More wrangling, ripping, cutting, and tugging ensues, and yes, at last, there it is: the old wood floor. It looks like cedar, an odd choice for a floor, with its raised knots and stringy grain. Though worn in the center of the room, much of the floor still wears a few coats of rowboat grey paint. No big deal. That'll come off with the drum sander.

If only the story ended right there. If only I hadn't gone ahead and rented the sander and the edger. If only I hadn't enlisted Emily, seven months pregnant and eager to pitch in. If only I had, at the very least, sealed the rooms off from the rest of the house with plastic sheeting. But, no, we went ahead and sanded, wearing flimsy white doctor's masks to "protect" ourselves, and when it was all over we congratulated ourselves on a job well done. Ah, such beautiful floors.

I left for the evening, and when I returned I found Emily reading in an adjacent room, dust still floating lazily in the air. I suggested that maybe it wasn't healthy to be hanging out amidst the dust, but Emily said, "It's only sawdust, right?" "Well," I answered, "it probably has paint in it too." It took Emily only a second to jump to the conclusion, which any seasoned homeowner or contractor would have found obvious, but which we, unbelievably naive and ignorant, only now realized: "Oh my God -- that was probably lead paint!"

We spent the rest of the evening huddled in our bedroom upstairs. The door had been shut all day -- in fact, we'd left our dog Hickory in there to keep her away from the sanding -- and we figured it was the safest, most dust-free place in the house. We slept little that night, sure that we had poisoned not only ourselves, but our soon-to-be-born child.

The next morning Emily and Hickory fled to stay with friends. I called Bob Zatske, the lead hazard specialist at the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. Kind enough to rush right over, he took samples in every room in the house. Lead dust particles are too small to see, he explained. The next day Bob called with the results, and they were every bit a bad as we had feared. Every single room in the house was contaminated. Some at double the allowable limit, and some at many hundreds of times that limit. If we were to live in this house with our baby, we would have to do the most thorough cleaning imaginable. Every surface would have to be vacuumed. Ceilings, walls, floors. Every wall and horizontal surface also would have to be wiped down with paper towels soaked in cleaning solution. Every horizontal surface means every inch of counter top, every top of a book or compact disk, every rim of a glass, every face of a penny. Every piece of clothing not in a drawer or closet would have to be washed. Every curtain too. Upholstered furniture and carpets would also have to be cleaned repeatedly. The list goes on and on.

It has been a week since we did the sanding. Emily and I both had our blood checked for lead, and thankfully we tested at well below dangerous levels. This means that the baby should be okay, but we can't know for sure. And after spending an entire week cleaning, I have only been able to remediate half the house. Still, I am optimistic that if I keep at it, we might be able to move back in next week.

Stuck inside cleaning, I miss wandering the hills. In the time I've been working, the snows have melted, fallen afresh, and begun melting again. These last few days I console myself trying to see what cannot be seen. The lead particles tucked in secret places. The living being, hidden in Emily's rounded belly. My own approaching fatherhood, full of worries and doubts, scrubbing and vacuuming like mad.

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