Kitchen Renovations, Part 3

Reconstruction

Once the walls in my kitchen were bare, it was time to cover them again. I had decided to use the moisture-resistant drywall, which I have always known as greenboard. To my surprise, what I knew as greenboard was actually purple at my local hardware store.

Cutting and installing the drywall wasn't all that difficult. From a previous job, I had a drywall screw gun which greatly sped up the process – and is something I highly recommend having if you have a lot of drywall to put up. I find drywalling sort of rewarding simply because it goes up fast and makes what was once studs, a room. After putting up the drywall, the usual tape and mud followed. Once the walls were done, it was time to paint; we choose a milk-coffee color, which seemed to work well with everything in the room.

Piecing Together the New Floor

With the walls done, I focused on finishing the floor. The first part of this task was to remove any holes in the floor and fill-in the plywood section with hardwood. Along the walls were some spots where holes had been drilled for plumbing or heating and were no longer in use. To remove them, I cut out small sections of hardwood floor and replaced them with new hardwood. I brought a piece of floor that I cut out to a flooring store to match it, and went home with a bundle of red oak. I have come to find that bare hardwood flooring is no longer easily available at your local hardware store; instead, everything now is prefinished.

Smooth & Shiny

The fun part of doing a hardwood floor is sanding it; for this I rented a sander. With the floor sanded, I decided to go over the floor with wood filler made for red oak flooring. The filler was just to fill in any small gaps. With the filler on and the floor sanded and smooth, it was time to put on polyurethane. The last time I applied poly, I used oil-based and I had no problems. I decided to try the water-based kind this time mostly because it is fast-drying.

Since I have to pass through my kitchen to get to other rooms, not being able to walk on the floor for awhile would be a problem. When using water-based polyurethane, it is first recommended to put on a sanding sealer. To me, the sanding sealer looked like it was watered-down polyurethane, but it did the job. I put on a number of coats of poly, and it did dry quickly; to me, it felt dry to the touch in a half hour, and I only had to wait an hour between coats.

With the walls up and painted and the floor done, I was starting to get a nice sense of accomplishment which is usually followed by some slacking-off.