 | Diary Navigation:
|
September 25, 2003
September and the Floor Refinishing Madness
Sorry I’ve been lax in posting lately. Between the house closing/fixing and searching for midwives, this month has been crazed for us. That first week after Labor Day, Dan resumed classes (he won’t be home on Wednesday evenings for the next two months) and all the legal mumbo-jumbo finally happened with the house. This entry is all about our house, which isn’t exactly pregnancy news, but someday I want to remember (and our child better appreciate!) all the work we went through in the past few weeks so that he/she could have a comfy first home. I’ll get to the midwife hunt as soon as I can.
***************************************
Wednesday afternoon after Labor Day, our agent and I did the final house walk-through and found everything in reasonable shape. I was a bit dubious that they’d be moved out in the next 16 hours, but they pulled it off. Thursday morning we woke up at the crack of dawn (i.e. 5:45am). Call me a wuss, but I hate getting up when it’s still dark outside. The day is coming when it’ll be dark when I get to work and dark again before I go home—I’ve got to get the most of the sunlight while I can. Anyway, Dan wanted to go to work for awhile before we closed on the house at 8am. The closer was on the same block as his employer, both of which are only ½ a mile from my parents’, so he dropped me off there and I snoozed for a bit before we signed away all our money and became homeowners for real.
It was nice to talk to the sellers, at least briefly. I hope they are glad we’re the ones moving into their home. I hope they wouldn’t have a heart attack if they saw what we’ve done with the place.
The mortgage company gave us two very nice pens at the closing. We joked that the pens cost us 100K+, with a house thrown in for good measure. The best part of the morning was the gift basket from our lender. Although the cynics in us knew she probably wrote it off as a business expense, we appreciated the sentiment of being given drinks (champagne for him, ginger ale for me), cheese, crackers, chocolate, and a $50 gift certificate to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Cha-ching! New soap dispenser and a shower curtain for me!
We also noted that our closing date, September 4th, was exactly 7 years after we started dating. We like to do things on the 4th of months—we decided to get engaged on Dec 4th (1998) and got married on Aug 4th (2001). If this baby would come on February or March 4th, it would sure make Dan’s life easier (Mr. Forget the Date).
That night after work, we brought our goody basket over to the house and had a picnic on the floor. We quickly realized that the only lights in the house are in the kitchen, the dining room, the entry way, the bathroom, and the basement. Mental note—bring over some lamps if we plan to see after dark.
That first weekend, Dan and my parents and I were in destructo-mode. I went outside to hook up a sprinkler and when I came back in, they’d already removed the living room carpet. Bye-bye green! Anybody need a 14’x12’ chunk of carpet? It’s in good condition; it just doesn’t mesh with a 100 year old house!
I went to work yanking up linoleum squares. They’d been put in maybe 6 years ago, and we were happy to find that they had not been attached using a tar-like substance that I’d heard was evil. Instead, it was like tearing off one square foot stickers. Once I got a routine going, I could remove one fairly easily. I took one side and my dad attacked the other, and together we got 1/3 of the 90 tiles up that afternoon. Underneath the removed tiles was a tacky wood floor, which became more and more difficult to avoid stepping on as we went along.
Within that first week, I packed up all the books in our old house and boxed them up. When we last moved at Thanksgiving, dealing with the books was one of our bigger headaches since we have a million of them and they get heavy fast. My mom came over and loaded the boxes in her van, along with our biggest bookshelf, so they were the first inhabitants of the new house.
By weekend number two, we thought we had it all figured out. Dan plucked all the staples and tack strips from the floor while I went to town on the linoleum tiles. And then the tiles started breaking. Rather than peeling happily, they chipped into little pieces when I ran the scraper under them. After dealing with a few tiles in bitty-sized chunks, I called Dad and got him back to help out. Together we managed to remove the rest of them, leaving islands of tiles until the last possible moment in order to provide a walking path from the living room to the kitchen.
When we’d removed all the floor coverings, we made a strange discovery—a small metal plate in the middle of the floor. We thought perhaps it was an old radiator vent. Once we removed it, we discovered a couple inch diameter rotting spot. Looked like we needed to replace the boards. Our Home Depot Do It Yourself Refinishing book directions looked easy enough. Finding maple boards was not. Home Depot didn’t carry the kind we needed. The lumber company they referred us to didn’t answer their phone or seem to be located where we were told to look.
Monday, I was determined to find a couple boards we could use. Lo and behold, once we were in working hours, the first unfindable lumber company answered their phone and said that not only did they have exactly what we needed, but they had extended hours starting that week, too. Yahoo!
Tuesday and Wednesday, Dan chiseled away at these two boards, driving back and forth to my parents’, where the “good tools” live. They were finally the right size, but needed nail holes drilled in.
Friday the 19th, Dan’s dad and uncle helped us move another vanload of things to the new place—the last of the books, another bookshelf, and all my sewing stuff.
Saturday morning we got up bright and early and headed over to the local hardware store. I went to their rental area and found out about a great new machine—the U-Sander. A few minutes of talking to the saleswoman, and I was convinced this sander was the ultimate do-it-yourself dream. Anyone want to sell me a bridge? She also convinced me that sanding off the linoleum adhesive wasn’t in our best interest, and suddenly we had a morning of solvent use ahead of us. We reserved the sander for later that afternoon and loaded up on supplies.
Mom and I taped up the kitchen and stairway in case the U-Sander’s promise to suck up all its dust didn’t hold true. Dan finally pounded the replacement boards into submission and got them securely attached to the floor. He then took the citrus-smelling solvent and began stinking up the house scraping the adhesive. Since solvents and pregnant women don’t mix too well, I got to cut out and hang out with a local group of Attachment Parenting moms from Mothering.com while Dan did the dirty work.
At 3:45, we managed to get back to the rental place only 45 minutes after our reservation with my parents’ van. The machine was indeed pretty slick. We had 100 years of adhesives and stains to remove, and places where the floor was flat, the wood sanded down pretty well. Of course, the floor wasn’t the slightest bit flat, so getting down near the edges was tricky, and some boards were more problematic than others. The worst were places where ancient carpet adhesive gunked up the sandpaper, which spat it back out onto other parts of the floor. We quickly learned that scraping up the adhesive and trying solvent on it was far better than replacing the sandpaper every 3 minutes. As it was, we had to run back to the hardware store for additional rough sandpaper just as they were closing.
While Dan used the big machine, my dad used a hand sander around the edges, and did his best to clean out under the radiators. I followed them around with a broom, removing the manageably small amount of sawdust they created. I ran out to get take-out Chinese for dinner, and the two of them kept at it until 10.
Sunday morning, we went over there as soon as we could, since we were still using the roughest sandpaper. It was noon before we graduated to the medium-grain stuff. Our two replacement boards were still noticeable, but the differences didn’t make us cringe by then.
Around 2, we realized we’d never be done by 3, and I somehow managed to convince the hardware store to let us keep the sander another hour without late fees. The rental was $90/day, and we thought someone else was waiting to pick it up. Phew!
We brought the sander back just before they closed at 4 and bought $95 worth of polyurethane. Dan was convinced that he needed to go home and collapse, but I was itching to get back and vacuum the place up.
At 8, I was at the point where staying on the couch forever was looking pretty good, and Dan must have soaked up my energy, because he decided to go back and clean. We had to get all the dust out before applying any polyurethane. I vacuumed while Dan went over everything with a rag and prepared the sealer. Since polyurethane fumes aren’t baby friendly, I went upstairs and emptied out all those book boxes we’d lugged in earlier. I was determined to reorganize our bookshelves and get rid of anything I could. Just before Dan coated the entryway, I came down so I wouldn’t be stuck without an exit. It was close to midnight by the time we got home.
Monday we were determined to get both the second and third coats of polyurethane applied. Dan’s dad came over and helped him with coat #2 while I stayed late at work. We went to dinner afterwards, then went to check back on the house. The second layer hadn’t behaved as well, so we decided to buy a new lambswool applicator. By then the neighborhood hardware store was closed, and the employees at Home Depot made it sound like we’d made a terrible mistake not sanding between polyurethane coats. There was NO WAY I was going to sand anything again, not when our moving day was less than a week away. We bought the applicator and went home, both in crummy moods and fearing the worst.
Tuesday, we went to the house—me loaded with laundry, and him with a fresh applicator. He finished layer #3 while I washed our clothes and vacuumed everything in sight, including the basement cobwebs.
Dan returned Wednesday to close up the open windows and check things out, but I haven’t seen the final product yet. Anything will look amazing in comparison to what we started with, and if need be, there’s always area rugs.
Now we’ve entered the frantic packing zone, but that and the moving day itself (Sept 27th) will be a story for another day.
Talk to Me: Tell me your home renovation stories. We won’t have to do any plumbing or electric work, but does anyone have any real horror stories?
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
