It's still floor time

Sanding floors. I have been sanding floors for days. Kathy has been sanding floors for days. The only good thing about that is that we actually LIKE sanding floors. Well, not the only good thing. The main good thing is that the floors are actually beginning to take shape and look good.

Kathy talks about how everything conspires against her and she can't get to the sanding. Today she was upset because they up and moved the Home Depot and it took her over an hour to find the store with the 24 grit sandpaper. Fortunately, the store only moved in her head and once she was re-oriented, it appeared. So we have 4 more sets of 24 grit sandpaper. We hope we do not need that much. It's time to more on to finer grit sandpaper.

Here are some before and after photos of the floors. They actually look better than the photos because the camera accentuates the shades in the wood.

This is one area of the stained living room floor. This floor was under a sheet of vinyl flooring.

And here is after we have sanded like crazy. We've also used a little hydrogen peroxide to try to get the stain up.

Much better, isn't it?

The floors look so much better that we are re-thinking the plan to stain it with Minwax "Dark Walnut" stain. I'm still thinking dark will look good in the house, but now we feel like we have a choice at least. We originally thought we couldn't get the floors to look anywhere near this good and that we would have to stain them dark to obscure the stains.

We'll keep you informed about the little house. Here is a shot of the house in the first ever (for me) Christmas snow.

It's floor time

I've been on a mini-vacation for the past few days. I went to Salt Lake City for my sister's birthday. When I left Greenville it was 16 degrees, but it was in the 40s when I arrived in Salt Lake. It barely got below freezing in the valley the whole time I was there. And no snow in the valley either, but there was very nice snow in the mountains. I was able to ski with my brother-in-law one afternoon.

You would not believe the lift lines. Impressive, huh? No one in the lines except someone else with a 1/2 day pass waiting for the magic hour of 1:00 pm.

We got 1/2 day passes at Alta so we had to wait about 5 minutes before we could get on the lift. It was very beautiful up there. 

The ironic thing about my return trip was that it was snowing in Atlanta before I got my flight to Greenville and we had to wait about 3 hours for the plane to get deiced. My brother told me that it has been colder in Greenville, SC than it has been in Yellowstone. Crazy weather, huh?

Anyway, back to renovation of the Lenore house. My current job is to do the floors. I am supposed to sand, stain, and apply polyurethane. I have been delinquent in my duty. My first frustration was that the 24 grit sandpaper gets clogged with the old floor varnish in about 5 minutes. Then I kind of injured my knee pushing the sander around the room. How does that happen? It's really easy for me. Basically I just extend my knee and push against it and boom! I'm hurting. 

So now I am wearing a knee brace all the time to remind me not to fully extend my knee and push against it. I worked at the house tonight and actually got somewhere with the floor in Adam's room. Here is a before picture of the floor.

Now here is what I've done tonight.

The varnish still clogs up the sandpaper, but I bought a lot more sandpaper. I still think I need about 10-15 more packages.

This is the U-sand with 4 brand new sandpaper sheets on. The floor looks much better doesn't it? 

We're going to stain the floor walnut with a satin water-based polyurethane. I think it will look good.

Kathy has done a great job priming everywhere. We have been somewhat indecisive about colors. We were going to put a grey called Rocky Bluffs (we call it Rocky Butts) in the mudroom, but decided that it really was too grey for a tiny room. We don't want white because it is a MUDROOM, the room the dogs go in and out of to go to the bathroom, rain, snow, ice or shine. We'll have to choose soon because we've got to get this house done. It needs to be livable (is that how you spell it?) as soon as possible.