Seal Cork Floors, step by step

When we last talked floors in the kitchen, they looked fairly much done.

But if you looked closely, they were not. They still needed some finishing touches – namely shoe molding to cover the gaps around the edges (which are intentional to allow for temperature expansion and contraction) and some coats of sealant (to keep moisture out of the seams and provide some brought in durability).

The short version of the “adding shoe molding” step goes something like this: Now you see a gap…

And now you do not…

Of course then there is caulk and paint involved (to cover the nail holes and any seams like where corners meet).

But let us go with the longer version of the story – which has a few more twists and turns – for folks who like details. The first twist was that we in fact ended up ditching our plans to reuse our old shoe molding, despite having saved (and meticulously labeled) all of the old pieces when we took out them a few weeks ago:

We initially thought that reusing it (after all that meticulous labeling) would make our lives easier. You know, not having to re-cut shoe molding for each span of wall. But when we tried to put some of the old painted pieces in place, they did not look so hot. The paint job was a little scrappy looking, and even with touch ups we worried the less than crisp edges would not look as wrapped up as they could (especially since there is such a high contrast between the white trim and the dark floor).

So we opted to install all new shoe molding. We had to buy some new stuff for around the cabinets anyway (like the peninsula, which did not have old shoe molding for us to reuse since it was newly brought in), so it was not a bit deal to pick up a few more pieces of it. We figured it was not worth “finishing” our fairly new floor job with rough looking trim. So in total, it was about $35 worth of shoe molding for a pleasant clean “like new” (because it is new) look.

Since we do not own a pneumatic nail gun, we installed it old skool style (although we have talked about getting one – perhaps for Christmas this year?). After cutting each piece, we’d pre-hammer our nails against a piece of scrap wood to get them in a ways, which minimized how much hammering we’d have to do against the floors.

Even when it was ready to nail into place, we still put a piece of cardboard under the work area to keep from banging up the floor too much. Oh, and forgive that piece of baseboard for looking a bit beat up. It was new too (the previous piece was too short since we switched the fridge and pantry location) so we hadn’t painted it yet. It came pre-primed but a bit scraped up.

Once the nail was in as far as I could get it with my hammer, I used a manual nail punch to get it in even farther, simply beneath the surface. Enjoy that thing. It is in short simply a metal peg with a compact head that you place right on the nail and bang the end of it to sink the nail in (without leaving big dings in the wood like hammering the nail directly could cause).

I would not say there were any “big” transformations as part of this step, but if I had to name one – it would be the area around the peninsula, which was lacking both shoe and baseboard:

Here it is with baseboard, at last. I’d been dying to add it, but we consistently figured it did not make sense to add until the new floor was in.

And here is what it looked like once we had cut the shoe:

…and now here it is with the shoe all hammered in. It still needs some work (we’d enjoy to add wood molding to hide the metal brackets and add interest to the back of the peninsula someday), but at least it is looking a bit more wrapped up. When the stools are in there (and you are looking at it from a normal height instead of squatting in front of it) you in fact do not notice the brackets too much.

Oh and that picture above is after another essential step of the shoe-ing process: Caulk! We consistently go over all of our seams (including the corners) with a bead of caulk to make everything look more polished. So here is us gunning a line of it on:

And here I am using my finger to smooth it out. We like to dip our pointer fingers in a cup of warm water to assist keep it smooth as we go (and to assist keep the caulk from sticking to our hands).

The step after this… well, after the caulk dries… is to paint. We still have to do some of this in a couple of spots, but overall it is looking much better. But before any “after” pictures, let us talk about sealing the cork. Even though our cork planks already came pre-sealed, experts recommend sealing them with three additional coats of water based poly after they are installed to add protection and effectively seal the cracks between the boards (which are not sealed even if the tops of each plank come pre-sealed). This also should keep dust and crud from settling into any seams so it’ll hopefully look pleasant and smooth for the long haul.

We had trouble finding much good info about how this step should go, so we called Lumber Liquidators (where we got our cork) and got to speak with one of their installers. He in fact installs and seals the Lisbon Cork that we purchased, so he was able to give us some quite clear instructions:

1. Hand sand with 100 – 150 grit sandpaper to remove some of the existing finish (“anything higher and you are simply polishing them”).
2. Apply a layer of the poly with a 3/8th nap roller
3. After that has dried (about four hours according to our poly manufacturer’s label), repeat steps 1 & 2 again… and then a third time.

So yeah, those were his explicit instructions… and we veered off course fairly swiftly. But we are so glad we chose to test things first, because even when experts recommend something, after you painstakingly install something, you want it to look excellent. Not scratched or purple. Yikes.

When it comes to what we used, we got some PRO Water-Based Polyurethane from Home Depot since it came highly recommended. We were so glad we did not have to use oil-based stuff since when we refinished our first house’s floors it stunk for months- especially on a hot day. Thankfully this stuff has no odor after the four hour drying period. So hooray for water-based stuff.

But our deviations off course began after we picked up the recommended poly. It all began at the sanding step. The sound of that quite step made us nervous. Sand our fairly new floors?!? So we did some tests on scrap pieces first. On the first piece we sanded simply as instructed with the exact grit he recommended. We even watched the guy demonstrate his hand-sanding technique and replicated it exactly, but it left some quite obvious (and ugly) swirly scratches on it. And even after applying a layer of poly it did not disguise them. Bummers.

So we thought that perhaps sanding in a straight motion might be less terrible looking. Nope… simply a distinct brand of scraped-up-yuck (in person it is truly clear that the surface is scratched, although in this pic it looks sort of like wood grain). Not good.

Since sanding seemed to only make things worse, we gave it a go without any initial sanding. We feared it might bead up or slide right off or something without roughing up the surface first. But nope, it worked simply fine – and even made the color of the cork truly pop. And that, my friends, is how we chose to skip the sanding step. Thank goodness for testing (if we had sanded a corner of the room instead of a test plank, we’d likely be fairly ticked off).

Having opted out of sanding, we went straight to applying it with a 3/8th nap roller, as per the second instruction. Enter “Yikes” moment number 2. This purple party certainly did not look right:

So in a total and complete panic (yes, there might have been some cursing) we swiftly wiped up the thick-ish layer of poly that the 3/8th nap roller left with paper towels. It simply did not feel right. The part of us that lives by the “thin and even coats” mantra (which is how we consistently apply water-based poly to seal things like wood furniture) chose that we needed to revise this instruction, pronto. So we broke out the least nappy rollers that we had: ultra smooth small foam rollers (the same thing that we use to poly furniture when we stain or paint it).

Worked like a charm. No more glowing purpley-blue haze, simply pleasant thin and even coats to protect things and seal our floors for the long haul. Because simply like when you seal furniture, the rule is that thin and even coats adhere better and last longer (anything too thick can crack or peel right off). So it in fact makes sense that this works on floors too – all without the purple haze. Whew.

Our revised technique seems to have worked simply fine. We cannot even begin to guess why the installer’s detailed pointers did not work on our sample planks (perhaps he installs lighter cork more frequently since it is more common, so perhaps the scratches or purple haze are not as apparent on that color?).

Thankfully, after three coats (one applied on Friday night right before we went to bed – so we would not have to avoid the kitchen all day – followed by one on Saturday night and one on Sunday night) it did not discolor and it seems to be sealed. Not that we tested it out by dumping water on it or anything. But we have had some small spills that were truly straightforward to wipe up (one even involved boiling water that a friend was using to sanitize her bottles). And it seems to standing up to Clara simply fine so far, dump trucks and all:

So now here are some “after”-ish pictures of the floors all trimmed out and sealed, with Clara doing some quality control exercises.

We even dropped a plate (which miraculously did not break thanks to the soft cork that cushioned the blow) and there was nary a ding or a dent. And Burger’s nails do not make any marks either (we heard from someone on this post who has cork floors and a 70lb dog and still does not have any nail scratches, which is fairly cool since we were not sure how a larger dog would work with cork).

Oh and there was one other thing that are required to “finish” the floors: transitions. We have four doorways in this room, and each needed its own “reducer” – which is a piece designed to join two rooms where one floor is slightly higher than the other. Ours is only about a half-inch higher in the kitchen (due to the asbestos liner under our original vinyl tile, which meant that we could not tear it up and would have to float the cork over it). The guy at Lumber Liquidators suggested getting oak transitions since cork, being a slightly softer wood, could get more beat up on an edge like this where things can catch. LL sold transitions for about $45 a pop, but I found similar options at Home Depot for $29. So after measuring, cutting, and nailing them in – our floors were officially transitioned. Okay, well, I am in fact waiting for two longer length reducers to come in on special order at Home Depot (they only carry 47″ lengths for $17 in the store), so our floors are officially mostly transitioned, to the tune of $140 total (including the special order pieces).

And once we get around to having our other floors stained darker, we might have something that looks more like this (the cork and hardwoods will never look identical, but the same rich mocha tone will unify and assist with flow, so our rooms do not feel as chopped up and disjointed). Ahh, if only getting floors refinished were as straightforward as Photoshop…

So we will call that a wrap on the kitchen floor. And since it was the last big project in the kitchen, we are thinking we owe you folks some real after pictures and a full-on budget and time breakdown for the whole project. How does that sound? We have some photos to take and some receipts to tally up, so let us say Wednesday. Same time, same place. In the meantime, what did you folks do this weekend? Any shoe molding installation or sealing going on?