In pain!

The past two days the MIL and I have been polyurethane-ing the floors. (Oh my gosh, we are thisclose to moving in!) And it has been tense, tiring, smelly, and painful work. I absolutely see why everyone recommends hiring professionals to do these jobs. If we are ever faced with bad hardwoods floors again I'm either buying a different house or hiring someone just to sand the floors. We noticed yesterday that I am apparently a terrible sander. The hallway had four distinct circles from the big orbital sander, and the study has lines from my OCD sanding. I thought it would be more efficient! Oh well. I'll have to remember to take pictures to show what NOT to do!

Yesterday we put the first coat on, and boy is it pretty! And thankfully, very forgiving, seeing as the circles from the professionals are hardly noticeable now. Today was sanding the bubbles out, tackcloth the dust, and second layer. And I have to brag for a moment, because one of the rooms I polyed (polied? poly-ed?) had *maybe* five bubbles. Hey, if there's one thing I know, it's how to create a dust free environment!

So tomorrow should be the last sanding and last coating, then wait three days and move in! Well, not exactly. I figured Wednesday should be our move-in date, but we'll be on our way to Mississippi to visit my family for Christmas then. Although I could move some items in while I wait for Ben to get out of work. We've only got about ten boxes of stuff to our names currently, so moving in should take about an hour total. But the fella we bought the poly from said it takes 30 days for the floor to completely cure, so no sliding furniture around. Which lead to some interesting questions between Ben and I about what constitutes as sliding:

• What if someone misses sitting on the couch and moves it, will there be a sliding mark and a butt mark?


• What if zombies visit? (They drag their feet you know.)


• What about Foster's super long toenails?


• What if we feel the sudden urge to create an indoor Slip'n'Slide?

No, come back next month!

Last week...

our floors were finally sanded! And then we found out no, they weren't exactly. The generous soul that sanded the whole place for $200, missed the hall closet, did the edges of the room in a rougher grit than the rest of the rooms (so there's a very visible outline) and missed a few other spots. I used my new orbital sander to rough up the closet and missed spots - check. The floor quite a few dark spots that went unnoticed when we were looking to buy the house ("That's why there were so many rugs!"), so those boards had to be replaced. Which required power tools...yay!

Then Thursday was Ben's only off day, so he and I went to IKEA to buy some furniture. I did some price comparison the day before in town to see if our trouble was about to be worth it. Can you believe it was cheaper to rent a pickup, drive four hours to Atlanta, and spend $80 on gas than to buy a couch from someone in town? I can, since we live in one of the richest counties in America! (Williamson County is the 17th highest income county) We got a couch, dining table, some dressers, TV console, bookcases and some little things that I knew were worth getting there. It's tough, we both don't want an entirely IKEA home, but agreed this is what we would do for now and replace when the time and budget was right.

Friday and Saturday were spent replacing boards, getting pieces for finishing the closets, getting ready for Ben's birthday, and being sick. Diane and I have both become slaves to our allergies and sinus problems. And yes I have been wearing the mask while working, but I still feel like someone has punched me in the face.

And yesterday was Ben's birthday! He turned 33 this year and we had a pretty great time. I got him a Heavenly Chocolate Pie(?) from the Puffy Muffin for his cake...he's obsessed with this pie. I wish I had taken a picture before we devoured it. Honestly, though, it's not much to look at; it looks like a giant cream pie with six different kinds of chocolate. It had something I've never experienced before: cinnamon foam? It was this hard, brittle, white layer and when you put it in your mouth it just disintegrated...wonderful! Anyhoo, Ben got to watch his football team, ate his mom's awesome steaks, had pie, I gave him a new Lego Star Wars ship to add to the collection, checked out the house (and replaced a few more boards that weren't working out), went restaurant hopping, and came home to watch some more True Blood.

Last week was an eventful and successful week!

Progress Update...in pictures!

A few picture of what's been happening the past couple of weeks...

The electrifying blue...ick!

A blue that works! Finally!

Hole in our closet after ripping out a small square of old vinyl flooring, concrete, and a huge piece of plywood.

Rebuilt the subfloor. Thanks for the power tool skills, theatre degree!

New hardwoods in the closet.

Ben trying his hand at sanding.

Study, after the sheetrock was hung. Ben and Don did the big pieces, I did the smaller ones.

Built-in cutting board I discovered, cut out. Not sure what to do with this yet.

I've been a bad blogger,

and I'm sorry. I'm noticing when ever there's a tiff or non-progress in the house, I get distressed, don't blog about, and then go shopping. Definitely not healthy.

What's happened in the past two weeks:
+ all the pre-move rooms are painted completely.
+ fixed the hole in the closet's subfloor and put down hardwood floors over it.
+ completely sheetrocked/mudded/sanded/primed the study
+ passed my income tax course with flying colors and expect the job offer to come any day now.
+ brother-in-law, Ray, came to visit for a week and we've all been having a pretty good time, except...

- Ben caught a stomach virus and was so ill we had to go to the ER at 1am
- then Ray got sick, too.
- with everyone sick we weren't able to go to anyone's Thanksgiving (would have been my first with the in-laws) and instead Ray and I had a Bobby Flay-esque fried chicken throw down. During which we promptly both lost.
- and then there's the floor situation...

The Floor Situation

As you can see, we attempted to sand our floors. Our intentions were to refinish them, since there are a few stains, cuts, gouges, and it's obvious the floor hasn't been worked on since it was installed. So we rent a big orbital sander (the safe kind for doofuses like us to work with) and a lot of sand paper and get to work. And after four passes in a room the floor still looks like the picture above. Granted, the picture is off a corner and you have to go in with a different sander for around walls, but there's finish left everywhere on the floors! After sanding for a couple of hours with 24-grit paper, which is basically rocks glued onto some paper. So we decided to return the sander before they charge us another day and have a pow-wow to decide what next we should do. (I've since come to the conclusion we should have just kept going, but c'est la vie.) Diane knows someone who knows someone who works on floors so she asks him what we should do. A) He doesn't say. Instead he B) offers to do it himself for $900. She gets him down to $200, seeing as we've already roughed the floor up pretty well. Awesome, right? Well...

He calls last Saturday saying he has time, could we let him in the house. Diane and Don go over to let him in, but go run some errands while he's working. Then he calls to say he can't do it. Every time he plugs in his sander, the fuse box flashes (?!) and his sander stops. He leaves. The next few days Diane and I talk to every electrician type we know to figure out what we can do. Everyone we talk to says they'd have to see it in person to say for sure, but it sounds like the floor guy is crazy. We think he may have taken off the plug to his sander and was just sticking wires in an outlet...good grief. We manage to get one of the electricians to meet us at the house with the floor guy that Tuesday, but the floor guy can't come. Because it's raining. Sigh.

So, now the floor guy is supposed to come Monday and Diane and I will be there to see what he does. And I'll have my dad, also an electrician, on the phone just in case. Here's hoping!

I guess as frustrating as that has been, it has given us the break we badly needed. It's also allowed us some time to work on the little things that can wait until we move in, but would be nice to have done prior: painting the trim, building the closets, and painting the inside of the cabinets. Oh, and I got to shop Black Friday for the first time ever. Got a red LG front-loader washer and dryer for half-off, and I didn't even have to camp out in the freezing rain all night, either!