Blue Wood

My mother-in-law has a real flair for decorating and house designs, and, since she gets bored with her house every few years, this is a good thing. Here most recent adventure in home renovations is the new wood floors in her two bedrooms.

In addition to being inventive, my mother-in-law is cheap. I don’t mean this in a negative way. I really appreciate people who have a lot of control with their money. I do better than a lot of folks, but the truth is I’m pretty bad with it. I aspire to be cheap in a lot of ways, but usually fail when it comes to houses and anything that my wife wants. When these two weakness of mine come together, bad things happen to me (like buying a Victorian and moving it).

My mother-in-law has been contemplating this project for years, but the hassle and the cost have kept her from committing to it. Hiring Kenny took care of a lot of the hassle. That just left the cost to overcome. Her solution to this looked pretty good on the front end; she bought 1” x 6” pine boards (think interior wood work) for her floor. Kenny and Burt did an amazing job laying the stuff even though they “hadn’t done anything like this before.” They fixed the boards to the sub-floor with a construction glue (F-26?) and faced nailed it with finishing nails.

It looks goods, but I don’t much like the idea of construction glue. Working on houses has taught me that no matter how well something is built, sooner or later someone will have to take it apart to fix, maintain, or repair it, and usually it is me.

Here is a picture of the floor.

Here is a close-up of the wood. Notice the blue streaking.

Originally, Kenny and Fidge thought these streaks were on the surface and they’d sand out. Jack spent the weekend working the floor over with a drum sander, and the blue is still there.

Fidge thinks the blue is some sort of mold in the wood. My wife and I think that it is either part of the tree (sometime soil may effect coloration) or that it resulted from the treating/drying of the wood. In any case, the wood is blue.

Fidge is now left with problem of what to do with the blue. She has tried several different stains on some scrap wood, and the results are less than inspiring. Anything with an orange’ish color turns brown-green when applied. Regular browns (like walnut) look odd too.

My wife and I are advocating the use of colored gels. We figure a white or light gray would look good and work with the blue. Last I heard Fidge still hadn’t decided what to do with it. It ought to be interesting to see what she does.