Repairing a Tasmanian Oak Floor

This Tasmanian Oak floor in Frankston South is one of the most amazing transformations my wife and I have ever done. The floor was rough, very rough.

The home is 70 odd years old and features floor boards up to 5 metres in length throughout, which is something you'll never see in todays newer homes due to newer floors being harvested from plantation grown and sustainable forests and the trees don't get to mature into the giants they were 70 years ago. But, that's progress for ya

Throughout the years the home had gone through a few various renovations, all kinda' stacked on top of each other. This happened a lot in the late '60s and '70s

Our job here was to remove some of the silly renovation efforts, where either particleboard or Pine was used rather than Tassie Oak 

Once all of our carpentry work was done the floors were then superfine sanded and stained with full strength Black Japan stain. The dark stain, apart from being the owners favourite look, also helped to hide many of the pet urine stains and watermarks throughout the home

Once the stain was dry the floors were finished with Handley Lo-Sheen polyurethane, which provides maximum protection and good looks

The following pictures really showcase the whole transformation from a mess to a masterpiece  

As pictured, the state of the floors is very poor - but, there was still enough potential to work with, so we got on with it

Pulling out the old false floor gave us enormous satisfaction and a few surprises as we had no idea what we might find underneath it all...

We ended up finding an old back verandah, some steps, landings, and a whole heap of mouse poo

With all the old and damaged flooring out of the way, it was now time to start re-building the sub-floor and laying our second-hand boards which we sourced from one of the many second-hand flooring places we deal with

At last we get all the boards in and it's time to get serious with the sanding side of things. As you can see, it's almost a miracle just how clean the boards can come up once we hit them with our heavy-duty sanding equipment - this is a pretty exciting time for us, as Lisa and I get to see all of our hard work starting to come together

With the boards now superfine sanded the real fun work begins, as we now get to apply the Feast Watson Black Japan stain. Lisa and I apply the stain by hand. I put it down and she comes along next to me blending it in all nice, neat 'n' even

As always, with staining floors we do the tricky, hard to reach spots first. Once dry, we can then easily fill in the blanks. It's a brilliant system

Applying the coatings over the stain is the next piece of the puzzle. It's easy enough to do, just as long as you're willing to take the time, as we do, to get it right

Resisting the urge to rush through the final finishing is the key to a brilliant stain job - fortunately, we are both blessed with great patience

The Black Japan isn't..., well, it isn't as black as many expect it to be. It's more of an intense dark brown colour. The Black Japan still gives enough coverage to hide many of the old stains from 70 years of being lived on

The Feast Watson stain picks up each and every twist and turn of grain - it's even more impressive in person than it is in a picture. But, nonetheless, here's some more pictures