I spent hours washing the floors today

[Tankeryanker]

Mom says that to kitten after she comes in the kitchen sliding on the floor.

Who the heck takes hours to wash a small kitchen floor?

[GentlemanJim]

In days of old, when knights were bold.......there weren't always "one step" floor care products.

Doing a thorough job on the kitchen floor meant first having to remove the old finish with an ammoniated stripper, usually including having to scrape out the corners. Removal of ALL previous wax was necessary for a quality final appearance. Usually includes having to move any free standing tables or chairs, and any wheeled carts to an adjacent room.


Then, you sweep

And then mop twice...once to assure the stripper has all been taken up, and then once for final cleanliness.

Then you apply multiple coats of wax, with at least 20-30 minutes drying time between each coat.

And, any housemarm worth her salt would definitely want to go around all the baseboards, and wash off any food splatter that had accumulated since the last time.

I can see it being a good 4-6 hours by the time the furniture is back in place.

[Hazel Anyday]

Didn't they have Glo-Coat back in them thar days?

Seriously, Gentleman Jim, your overall knowledge is amazing. From making door handles in the middle of doors to shining floors. Where does it stop?

Back in the '60's, as a kid, I used to shine our kitchen floor. We had a floor polishing machine that resembled a lawn mower with 2 round extremely fast moving brushes on the bottom. It looks like the one that hopefully shows up in a picture here. I did it by sprinkling water all over the floor then used the machine to shine it all up. Hey, it worked.

I used to love doing this job though because if you held the handle straight up the machine went wild, twirling around and around and zig-zagging all over the place. It was so wild sometimes I couldn't keep hold of it and it really went crazy. Mom wasn't too pleased when she heard the machine going nuts but it was fun for a kid.

[rcbrad]

She did say floors, there are other floors in the house besides the kitchen floor.

[stevea]

Or, she was exaggerating for effect. Like Ward Cleaver walking 25 miles to school with his pedometer.

[Tankeryanker]

I listened again and I think she said floor not floors.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by Hazel Anyday

Didn't they have Glo-Coat back in them thar days?

Seriously, Gentleman Jim, your overall knowledge is amazing. From making door handles in the middle of doors to shining floors. Where does it stop?

I worked part time when I was going through school, as a janitor in a high rise office building, One of my regular duties was to strip and re-wax floors.
The disparity between refinishing floors the "old school" way, versus the "one step" products popular today...easily accounts for a good couple hours difference in project time.

Eventually I took an opening on the construction and maintenance crew when one became available, and learned about door knobs, boilers, and cooling towers.

I guess I was kind of a naive kid back in those days, I always wanted to learn how to do anything I didn't already know, whereas I guess the "american way" has always been to try and get out of as much work as you can?

Specific to the kitchen floor and the OP's curiosity, I remember having to help my mom do hers a few times, and by the time one moved all the loose furniture out and back, and labored to remove all the old wax and grit, then apply multiple coats of new wax..... I can't imagine anyone thinking this would be an "only two hour" job.
Unless they were born in the "mop and shine" era.

[GentlemanJim]

Moreover, Stripping and waxing the kitchen and bathroom floors, changing out the storm windows for screens (and vice versa) and canning fruits and vegetables are the "big three" ancient rituals of the goode olde days that I don't miss at all.

Why my mother would always pick the hottest day in August to load up the kitchen with all that steam to can the garden goods,...I could never figure out.

Then it seemed like about every 8 years it was time to scrape the loose paint off the house and repaint. Gosh how I hated that job.

[Hazel Anyday]

I wasn't kidding, Gentleman Jim, I'm amazed at your overall knowledge. Sounds like you've had many different and varied experiences. That's the real way to learn. Tho I do disagree with learning is not the American way, if it weren't for learned Americans we wouldn't have 1/2 the great essential inventions we now take for granted everyday. But I appreciate your comments and your knowledge.

[GentlemanJim]

Well, sincere thanks for the kind words. Flattery in one thing I usually do not take very well, because I tend to imagine that some motive might be behind it.

The machine you reference was no doubt a big help. When I was doing that sort of thing commercially, we had these buffing machines with an 18" diameter wheel spinning on the bottom, that had interchangeable polishing discs to complete the shine.

We finished our basement at home and did the floors with a black VA tile...and over the years I had stripped and waxed it a few times.....even got lazy and started using the "one step" products.
But after I got that janitorial job I got the urge to go all out, so One weekend I took one of those commercial buffers home, and spent the entire weekend stripping, and scraping, and mopping, and multicoat waxing.
Then I used that machine to spray buff and polish about 5 coats of new wax.
The results were breathtaking.

Under low light conditions that floor looked like a bottomless swimming pool.

[Hazel Anyday]

Don't worry, I don't have a swamp I want to sell you. There are just few individuals I can say I respect and admire for their knowledge. Maybe I just don't know enough of the right kind of folks. Don't be embarrassed. I don't take a complement well either.

Your story is a lot like my Dad's, he did many different things and jobs as he grew up, had many different experiences at different kinds of jobs. And he was somebody that knew everything. Any time I had a question, he had an answer. His personality left a lot to be desired, but he was overall a very smart guy once you got past the gruffness.

Did you ever hold the handle of the buffer machine as I did as a kid and watch it go crazy all over the floor? That was great fun for a kid.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by Hazel Anyday

Did you ever hold the handle of the buffer machine as I did as a kid and watch it go crazy all over the floor? That was great fun for a kid.

We used to show off, and do stupid stuff. One night I was up on the 15th floor, and was polishing the floor in the elevator lobby.
Once you use those for a long enough time, you start to imagine yourself as "expert".

So a co-worker comes to my floor to chat, and I turn around, grab the buffer behind my back, turn it on, Everything was going just great, until the machine ran over it's own power cord.

The machine's torque ripped the controls out of my hands, went into a mad spiral, and threw itself up against the metal elevator doors with a huge thud.
That thud echoed up and down that elevator shaft for a good 15 seconds.

I'll bet everybody in that building heard the racket. My boss sure did.