We have been refinishing the floors in our house. This caused the servers to have to be moved to empty out those rooms. Now that we're finished the furniture can be moved back (including the servers). So the IRC will go offline this afternoon for a few hours as things and moved and cables hooked back up.
For those interested in "why". We moved into a beautiful 90+ year old farm house far out in the country. Large lots of space and hard wood floors through out the house. Problem was the floors had an old shelac finish that had not been touched for 90 years. Some people like to talk smack about shelac but to be honest it held up VERY well for being 90 years old. Problem was, time did take it's toll and there was a lot of bare exposed wood. Where wood was exposed rot had set in as humidity and moisture were working their damage.
After doing some research it seemed like there was going to be no easy answers at all. The old hardwood floors would need to be sanded down past the rot and old finish. First with a low grit then stepping up through higher grits of sand paper till a polish grit was achieved. I decided to use Polyurethane without stain to let the "natural" beauty of the wood show through. We would start with the downstairs, splitting the house in two, moving all furniture to one side, sand, apply poly wait 24hrs then abraid-sand then up to 4 coats. Then wait a week for the polyurethane to fully cure before using the room. Then switch and do the other side of the downstairs. Took 6 weeks. A lot longer than planned. But it was well worth the work. Why was all this work worth it? The nice thing on this commercial grade polyurethane I used is the finish will last 10-20 years then can be given a light sanding and a new coat of polyurethane can top it making the floors look like new again. If the floor gets a scratch the spot can be sanded and poly brushed to the area and the floor looks like new again. The original 90 year old hardwood is now protected and with proper care should never need touched again.
Here are some pictures some of you may enjoy seeing:
This is my living room floor. Lots of water damage and rot setting in. In the next you can see, after sanding, there were tons of deep scratches like a road map. Every one had to be sanded out and polished by hand. Took many days.
The end result in the family room after so much work. Note this corner is the EXACT same corner as the first picture.
Here is the state of the original floor in the dining room.
Here is the dining room floor finished.
Here is the original downstairs bedroom floor. SOOOO many scratches this room took forever.
Here is the bedroom finished.
With winter closing in we'll do the upstairs in the spring. But the IRC servers sat in the dining room so you now see why they needed moved!
WhiteSheperd