Tired

Today was our day to 'refinish' the den parquet floor...well, we thought that was going to happen.

From 8 till 10:30 this morning, we wrestled ALL the furniture out to the back patio, prepping some of it for Goodwill pickup next Thursday. (We'll have to haul it to the front of the house then, but that's another story). Jim #1's famous green pleather sofa/recliner was the hardest and easily took 30 minutes to get out the door. Gawd.

Prep of the floor took a LOT of time. Danny headed off to Homo Depot for trip #1 to rent a sander, get the sander pads, stain, and polyurethane. I finished up repairing several damaged parts of the parquet floor.

Now, this floor was installed by me and a couple of other square dancers in 1995 so I'd complete the dance space downstairs. By stupid accident, there were two different shades of parquet that I ended up putting in the 700 square foot room. It all came out looking okay though, with a fanciful bowtie motif in the center of the room from the two different shades.

Disaster struck six months later, when I left the water running in the xeriscaped front yard and flooded 1/3 of the downstairs, which caused a huge mass of the parquet to soak and warp to the nth degree. Can we say 'completely demoralized'? Well, over the next month or so, I hastily patched the damage and accidently installed even MORE of the wrong shade of parquet in areas that were too damaged to reinstall the old damaged parquet, and I couldn't find the right dye lot anymore. About 1/3 of the floor looked bad, but with careful placement of throwrugs and furniture, it was passible, and had been until we started this remodel.

So now we're redoing it all.

Danny succeeded in straining his back with the sander...it easily weighs 100 pounds, and damaged his car when he was putting it in. He had to go ask for help...I can't believe they wouldn't help automatically. After we wrested it downstairs, Danny had to make another run to another HD to pickup even more supplies. I started the Vibro-master sander, happily having a set of headset ear savers that cut the noise by 80%. But it wasn't working as fast as I thought it would.

Danny got back with a small sander and more supplies, and I was about 15% done with the first pass. That was at 2:30.

We had a small dinner break at 6 and ANOTHER run to Home Depot to pick up more sanding sheets, and by 9:30 we said we had had it with the initial sanding. This is ridiculously hard, and we still have some of the old finish we can't get up.

But tomorrow at crack-o-dawn, we're going to put in 4 more hours of final sandings before we have to get the sander back to Home Depot. And it'll take even more fine tuning. I really can't stand this....

We still have to figure out how to blend the stain to make the two different shades of parquet turn into one cohesive coat, stain the floor, apply the 3 coats of polyurethane, deal with all the furniture outside, as well as the many tons of box we've put in different rooms INSIDE, and then go to Phoenix for their flyin.

We have games night schedule with Lawrence and Scott tomorrow. I think it's going to be a much needed break from this backbreaking work.

Tired

Today was our day to 'refinish' the den parquet floor...well, we thought that was going to happen.

From 8 till 10:30 this morning, we wrestled ALL the furniture out to the back patio, prepping some of it for Goodwill pickup next Thursday. (We'll have to haul it to the front of the house then, but that's another story). Jim #1's famous green pleather sofa/recliner was the hardest and easily took 30 minutes to get out the door. Gawd.

Prep of the floor took a LOT of time. Danny headed off to Homo Depot for trip #1 to rent a sander, get the sander pads, stain, and polyurethane. I finished up repairing several damaged parts of the parquet floor.

Now, this floor was installed by me and a couple of other square dancers in 1995 so I'd complete the dance space downstairs. By stupid accident, there were two different shades of parquet that I ended up putting in the 700 square foot room. It all came out looking okay though, with a fanciful bowtie motif in the center of the room from the two different shades.

Disaster struck six months later, when I left the water running in the xeriscaped front yard and flooded 1/3 of the downstairs, which caused a huge mass of the parquet to soak and warp to the nth degree. Can we say 'completely demoralized'? Well, over the next month or so, I hastily patched the damage and accidently installed even MORE of the wrong shade of parquet in areas that were too damaged to reinstall the old damaged parquet, and I couldn't find the right dye lot anymore. About 1/3 of the floor looked bad, but with careful placement of throwrugs and furniture, it was passible, and had been until we started this remodel.

So now we're redoing it all.

Danny succeeded in straining his back with the sander...it easily weighs 100 pounds, and damaged his car when he was putting it in. He had to go ask for help...I can't believe they wouldn't help automatically. After we wrested it downstairs, Danny had to make another run to another HD to pickup even more supplies. I started the Vibro-master sander, happily having a set of headset ear savers that cut the noise by 80%. But it wasn't working as fast as I thought it would.

Danny got back with a small sander and more supplies, and I was about 15% done with the first pass. That was at 2:30.

We had a small dinner break at 6 and ANOTHER run to Home Depot to pick up more sanding sheets, and by 9:30 we said we had had it with the initial sanding. This is ridiculously hard, and we still have some of the old finish we can't get up.

But tomorrow at crack-o-dawn, we're going to put in 4 more hours of final sandings before we have to get the sander back to Home Depot. And it'll take even more fine tuning. I really can't stand this....

We still have to figure out how to blend the stain to make the two different shades of parquet turn into one cohesive coat, stain the floor, apply the 3 coats of polyurethane, deal with all the furniture outside, as well as the many tons of box we've put in different rooms INSIDE, and then go to Phoenix for their flyin.

We have games night schedule with Lawrence and Scott tomorrow. I think it's going to be a much needed break from this backbreaking work.