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Quick Home-Improvement question!
#364150 01/18/12 08:51 PM
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Hey guys-
I'm at the point where I can be sanding and polyurethaning the kitchen floor soon. Joyce just offered to take the dog away for the weekend to enable me to get multiple coats on there without it interfering with the family life (The smell gives her wicked headaches). If that's the case, I want to see if I can rent a floor sander Friday, to start putting down coats of poly on Friday night & Saturday.

So, here's the problem and the quick question. In the main part of the kitchen, the floor is in good enough shape for a straight finishing job. In the small pantry area shown here, the existing maple floor doesn't reach the toe kicks on the new cabinets... and is also in bad shape in a few spots.







(sorry about the large photos, I'm rushing this post)

I'm thinking that what I would like to do is to maybe make a cut perpendicular to the board ends, removing the last inch and a half or so, and then put new boards in around the perimeter:



The problem is that I then need to make that cut on the existing boards. I can't get a circular saw in there... no room around the cabinets. I could use a Sawzall, but I don't think the cut would be straight enough. Complicating things is that there are likely nails in the cutting area....knocking out the possibility of, say, a router with a spiral bit.

I know I've seen what in essence are very small circular saws...maybe a 3" blade or so... that could get under the cabinets and maybe go through the nails if I had the right blade.

Any thoughts? If I need to buy something, I can get it overnight very cheaply from Amazon as I'm a Prime Member, allowing me to do this stuff tomorrow before sanding Friday.

Of course, I can just rip all this out and put in tile..... !

Edit: Something like this Rotozip is what I was thinking of....

Last edited by MarkSJohnson; 01/18/12 09:22 PM.

::::::: No disrespect to Axiom, but my favorite woofer is my yellow lab :::::::
Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
MarkSJohnson #364155 01/18/12 09:14 PM
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Cut back the existing floor from the point where you CAN get a circ saw in there. Then there will be more boards in the final "trim-around" and it will look intentional. Lots of old houses have parallel floor boards only in the middle of a room. The perimeter goes both ways with the corners of the "perimeter" pcs. mitered.

Or, don't miter them and color the new maple boards black, or anything that makes them look suffuciently different from the clear maple.

At any rate, the final result (of anything)
shouldn't look like it was a solution to a problem. Rather, it should look intentional and part of the planned design outcome.

Nailing off retrofit flooring pcs. under cab toe-kicks is never easy, but you can do it!


Always call the place you live a house. When you're old, everyone else will call it a home.
Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
BobKay #364157 01/18/12 09:27 PM
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Or you could cut it back and put some subfloor and a tile that would fit flush with the wood. Just a thought.

Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
BobKay #364158 01/18/12 09:31 PM
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I agree with Bob's suggestion, Mark. If that doesn't work for you maybe you can find a small trim saw with a 3-4" blade to do the job. One rather radical method you might consider is tilting your circular saw at a 45 bevel and see if you can then reach what you want to do. The mating strips would then need the same angle of course. Heck, maybe you need to buy a trim saw AND tilt IT at 45 bevel!


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Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
Adrian #364166 01/18/12 10:04 PM
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I'm with Bob as well.

If you do want to undercut, you could get one of these:

http://toolmonger.com/2007/09/05/dealmonger-harbor-freights-40-toe-kick-saw/

Of course, use it against a straight edge, no free handing it.

Bren R.

Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
Adrian #364168 01/18/12 10:09 PM
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How about something like this.

As other have noted, it's always an option to make a "feature" out of a problem. When I screw up on a woodworking project and have to come up with a work-around, I just call it 'design evolution'. Think outside the box and you can probably come up with something that looks like it belongs there.


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Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
Joe_in_SC #364176 01/18/12 11:50 PM
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+Bob.


bibere usque ad hilaritatem
Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
tomtuttle #364178 01/19/12 12:32 AM
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Thanks everyone for the quick suggestions!!!

Bob, your idea is exactly what Joyce and I had talked about. I thought maybe a contrasting color (Mahogany?) might ADD a design element and get me past having to match the existing Maple exactly. There's a problem, though, that I failed to mention in my first post: It seems as though, when the floors were first installed, they started at the farthest point in the kitchen and then moved across and into the little pantry area.

From the foreground to the background, and into the pantry visible behind the doorway half-blocked by the fridge:



Problem was, by the time they got all the way across (about ~25'), they weren't square. In other words, the last Maple board in front of the sink base has a 1 1/2" offset between the left side and right side of the sink base.

Soooooo....... if we do a "contrasting wood" or "frame of tile" type thing, that floor that's not square with the cabinets will just become much more evident!

Joe, I have a multi-tool that I bought the other day and haven't even tried. I'm kind of committed to Ryobi tools since I have so much invested in them already, and Home Depot was running a special last week where, for $99, you got a drill, a circular saw, a charger, 2 batteries and you got to pick another tool.... so I picked a multi-tool figuring it might come in handy with all the finish trim work I have coming up. I needed a couple of new batteries, which are $70 by themselves, so I couldn't resist the deal. It's now my third Ryobi drill (anyone want one?) and my second circular saw.... but they make these bundles hardly more expensive than the batteries by themselves!

Anyway...... so I have one, haven't used it yet, but didn't really expect that it would be good for cutting ~15' of hardwood.

After dinner, I picked up a RotoZip like I linked to above. It ends up that HD carries them, so I got it and figured if I came home and everyone said it was the wrong tool for the situation, I could return it it next time I'm at HD....which seems to be pretty much everyday at this point!


::::::: No disrespect to Axiom, but my favorite woofer is my yellow lab :::::::
Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
MarkSJohnson #364185 01/19/12 01:01 AM
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Oh, one more thing Bob:

I figure that nailing down and boards under the toe-kick was going to be too much of a PIA.... so I would either just use Liquid Nails or I would screw them underneath from the basement below. (or both)


::::::: No disrespect to Axiom, but my favorite woofer is my yellow lab :::::::
Re: Quick Home-Improvement question!
MarkSJohnson #364192 01/19/12 02:32 AM
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Just cut it square with the cabinet instead of along the board. I think that's the lesser of the two weevils.


bibere usque ad hilaritatem
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