Finishing Details

Lots happened today. We were seriously motivated and got a lot done. We have arbitrarily decided on September first as move-in day and September 13th as House-warming party day so having specific dates has certainly helped us move faster.

As I am extremely clumsy, I am not allowed a paint brush where a spill would be difficult to compensate for such as near a finished floor. But what I love to do and most people do not like is to sand and finish the floors. So while everyone else was in on the paint party. I was working on the stairs.

After we stained the floor 2-3 days ago, we took off our booties and then walked on the stairs. My sister was wearing shoes, I was wearing socks. Apparently the little flimsy booties they sell at the big box stores are not sufficient to prevent stain from bleeding through. I need to remember this. I sanded the stairs with 4 grits - 60-80-100-120 with exhaustive vacuuming in between. Tedious work, but the stairs are so smooth now. I am very happy. I will stain them tomorrow.

I have protected the already painted balusters with homemade baluster condoms. We will see how they work to prevent stain from getting on the paint.

Then I stained the bottom newel post. I think it looks really nice. I can't wait to get the finish on the stairs. They will be so beautiful.

We had trouble finding a stain to match the front inside of the mahogany door. The wood trim is some kind of pine (radiata pine, maybe?) that doesn't take stain as well as we would like. So the mahogany stain that we used on the door would not work. John noticed that the semi-transparent stain on the porch looked like it would match. Crazy. No way would that work, but it did. In fact, it looks great. He covered it with 2 coats of polyurethane.

John got the shoe mould done on the porch and in both bathrooms. We initially thought about painting it, but decided on staining it instead. It looks great.

This is the porch shoe mould. 

Downstairs bathroom shoe mould. It looks great with the tile. 

Anyway, a very productive day. We are getting somewhere and soon John should be in his cozy little energy-efficient home. 

Thank you for taking a look at the progress on John's house.