Another week has come and gone at Little Plum Place. We are back to ‘typical’ Wisconsin weather. Cooler temperatures and occasional rains has made this week a delight. Indoors we keep swinging away at the list of ‘to do’ items as we near the completion of the basement remodel. This is how I spent most of this past week, in paint rags and a respirator. I am
happy to report that all of the ceilings and walls are primed and painted. A few more doors to seal and this week I will begin refinishing floors. When we tore out the old carpet back in February I had tried to sand off the glue residue with a floor sander. I was at the time happy with the resulting floor. However, over the course of the past three months with drywall dust, saw dust, paint spills etc… what I thought I was a smooth floor, was not.
I tried using a heat gun and paint scraper to remove the old glue. It worked, but there was no way I could endure 1000 square feet of floor. The internet to the rescue. After surfing the net and reviewing several chats on line I came across the solution. Hydrogen Peroxide. Simply apply to the floor, walk away for 15-20 minutes, come back and easily scrape away. I had a half of a bottle in the medicine cabinet, so I thought I would give it a try. Wow! It works. The next question. How much hydrogen peroxide will it take to remove all of the glue. I’m still working on that. Rick & I made a quick trip to Pepin to the local Family Dollar store. We were both surprised to find several bottles (both 32 oz and 16 oz and even some spray bottles) of hydrogen peroxide on the shelves. We cleaned the store out of the bigger bottles and took half of the smaller bottles. A cart of this stuff raises some questions.
I started in the bedroom(pictured above). The west end of the basement was the hardest area of carpet to pull up, since it had the most glue. I have learned to really take my time and let the product do its job. Once I got going a small front of ‘sludge’ started to form and I could use less peroxide as I progressed. I managed to get 3/4 of the room scraped free from glue. I will still have to do a little sanding and mopping before I can paint and seal the floors but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will post an update the end of this week with (hopefully) finished floors.