Sunday, November 25, 2007

cleaning




Spent part of the Thanksgiving holiday cleaning up the concrete floors and preparing them for staining with ferrous sulfate. Christie gets the unenviable job of cleaning the dirt and straw out of the saw cut control joints. I refamiliarized myself with a heavy duty mop and bucket. Lots of chalk lines, pencil marks, straw, mud and sap to clean up.

10 comments:

Luke C said...

Yow! Hope all that mopping didn't lead to flashbacks of McDonald's! Sounds like the finished product will be a perfect target for a solar-powered Roomba and Scooba.

Christie and Scott Mackison, owners said...

Hi Luke,

Well, McDonalds was 24 years ago! Still, the pain lingers...

I think Roomba and Scooba would likely choke to death on our floors in their current state. Maybe once their sealed and waxed.

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful house! I can't tell from the photos but i was wondering if you stained the floors yet? I used ferrious sulfate to stain my floors. One floor I added maganese(sp) sulfate (grey to black tones) just for a little difference. We are very happy with them. It took a while to get it right, but switching from granules to powder and using warm water made a huge difference. How about some photos? Keep up the good work, it looks like it is really starting to pay off for you, Troy PS here is a link to my build however, it needs updated. www.helmickpharm.50megs.com

Christie and Scott Mackison, owners said...

Thanks Troy. We spent the weekend cleaning and mopping - and then the work week hit and we ran out of time. Now the floors are muddy once more. (but LESS muddy). Hopefully over Christmas break we'll get a chance to re-clean, stain, and cover the floors. The warm water is a good tip. Did you mix the maganese with the ferrous sulfate? How many coats did you end up using? I was going to throw some coffee grounds in the mix but I don't really know if that will work or not. (I just like coffee)

Anonymous said...

i used four mixtures ( I forgot about the copper sulfate for green tones). One weak solution of ferrious sulfate, one strong solution ferrious sulfate, one strong maganese sulfate and one strong copper sulfate. Random sponge mop circles with the weak solution. I left some random areas unstained. After cleaning, I used the strong solution on the unstained areas overlaping the stained areas. After cleaning I did the same with maganese, then the copper . I was wanting a variegated look. I think it turned out great and I get many compliments. You have to clean all the residue off before sealing. It is very, very hard to get all the residue off, but it has to be done. I have some photos on my web site on page 15. the photos are of the floor prior to cleaning the residue. when clean, the colors toned down a lot.

Troy said...

Scott,
Also, I did son's bedroom, bathroom, and laundry room with only the ferrious sulfate mixes. I did them as described above, however, my wife just reminded me that I had only planned to leave bare spots to be stained with the darker solutions. I instead stained all the floors using the weak ferrious solution , and not leaving the bare spots. I then went back and used the darker solutions randomly for the variegated look. To clarify, I used only ferrious mixes for the rooms mentioned above, while I used maganese, copper and ferrious in the great room. I’ll try to get up to date photos soon. The photos on the web site are miss-leading. They were taken before all the residue was removed and they look much different now.

Christie and Scott Mackison, owners said...

Thanks Troy. I'd love to see how they turned out.

Scott.

Anonymous said...

Scott, You can get an idea of what my floors look like at www.helmickpharm.50megs.com I've posted a few new photos on page 17. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Again, your home is very beautiful!! Troy

Christie and Scott Mackison, owners said...

Troy,

Those shots of your floor look great! How did you end up getting the residue off between coats? Is there a reason you went with mopping the solutions rather than spraying them?

Thanks,

Scott.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Scott. I used a mop because I found a web site where the guy used both and said the he preferred the mop. Thought I'd try the mop and ended up sticking with it. To remove the residue we mopped several times. The last couple of times we used a little dish liquid. We even used a shop vac a couple of times. Don't forget to remove the filter like I did. The solutions wreak havoc on wood, so make sure you protect everything you don't want stained.
Troy