Skunks and Sanding Floors

We sanded our floor over the weekend because of a skunk!

A skunk?  Yes, you heard that right.  While getting ready for the Duxbury Show, Poppy, our lovely dog, got sprayed in the face by a skunk!  It was around 7pm at night and it was the most horrible, gut wrenching, a million times worse than road kill skunk smell.  I wasn’t expecting it to be so strong.

At first we couldn’t tell if she’d been sprayed because all around our house smelled so intense, almost like a burning smell.  It burned our mouths and eyes and our poor dog was traumatized rubbing her whole body on the sunroom rug.  She also was bleeding from her mouth as I think it irritated it so much.

I ran around the house closing doors thinking this would stop the smell getting to bedrooms etc.  I was wrong!

It was everywhere even in our closet.

We washed our dog down with a mixture of bicarbonate of soda,  peroxide and a few drops of liquid soap.  But you have to be really careful of their eyes.  So her head (even now) still smells a bit skunky.

We opened all the windows in the house and put bowls of vinegar in every room.  This neutralizes the odor.  That worked everywhere except the sunroom.

The rug was just ruined – between the smell and the blood from her mouth.  So we ripped it up. Thankfully, it wasn’t glued down.  It was just nailed in place. We pulled the smelly rug up and then carefully removed the wooden nail strips and pulled up the underlay.  I went around getting rid of all the nails and staples.

Good bye, skunky rug!

Under the carpet was fir planks.  We knew this from the previous owner and had been planning on doing this at some point, just not right now, but things happen for reasons I guess. Under that green paint and water stains the floor is in good shape.

We decided to rent a sander from Taylor Rental.  After talking to them on the phone, we thought the Clarke E-Z Sander would be a our best bet.  This sander is able to get closer to the edge and doesn’t need to go with the grain of the wood, a bonus because the wood grain goes the short way in our room, and you can hook it to a shop vac so it is dustless.

Before we started sanding we removed this molding (we’re going to do nice molding in the whole room). We also made sure all the nails were hammererd down and nothing was sticking up.

Look at those sanding pads:

Then we got going.  I actually really really loved using this:

Luke did too!  We took turns.

We started with the lowest number – 20, then 36, then 60 and finished with 100 grit sand paper.

And here’s how the floors are looking now:

You can see there is a little paint on the edges so we need to go back over these areas with a palm sander before refinishing the floors.

The best part is this room doesn’t smell like skunk anymore, but wood!

I have really big and exciting plans for this room.  Can’t wait to share them soon!