Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The floors



Well, with another[emergency] home project looming on the horizon, I thought I would finally post about our floor refinishing. After considering our options, which were few given that we didn't have $2500 for professional floor refinishing, we boldly forged ahead with our decision to tackle the floors on our own. I spent most of the night prior to the project either awake, worrying about the floors or dreaming about landing with the sander in our basement. Neither scenario afforded me much sleep or peace.


So, first thing that morning, Sandro headed off to the rental place and I got the final pieces of furniture out of the way. We woke up the birthday boy, sang to him, gave him presents and cinnamon rolls and then banished the kids to the basement with a movie and the promise of endless tv and snacks if they would just stay down there.



The sanding actually went much smoother than either of us had anticipated (no pun intended). it was mainly time consuming and because this was July 30th-it was also sweaty work. Sweat mixed with floor dust-not a pretty sight. By lunchtime, we had completed the requisite 4 passes through the living room with ascending levels of sandpaper grit: you got your 20, your 36, your 60 and your 100. We skipped the 80 like we were professionals who knew exactly what we were doing.


I took the kids to McDonalds for lunch and then to a friend's house while Sandro started the dining room. I came home and handled clean up and did a little more sanding. As is our custom, we didn't speak of how the job was going-no need to get ahead of ourselves. By 5 pm the job was done and I was on my way to pick up the kiddos and get home to shower.


Finally, at dinner, we had a little celebratory patting each other on the back and marvelling at how well we had done. The next morning, came applying the wax-again time consuming and sweaty-this time with an overpowering smell instead of the dust from the day before. We headed out of town for the wax to dry and vacationed at my parents' house for the day.


With buffing the only task left, we were supposedly home-free. But, the industrial strength buffer we had planned to rent was not the right tool for the job. Honestly I was disappointed that we wouldn't have the chance to drive that big buffer and more than a little put out that we were running out of time and our victory seemed about to turn to defeat. After a little bickering, Sandro procured a hand buffer and the job was back on.


So, we are still quite pleased with both the floors and ourselves.