Couldn't Do-it-myself

In response to intense pressure from a co-worker and my supervisor to get some new stuff posted to the blog, I'm taking my turn tonight to write a quick update while Amanda is out. Hopefully my effort will pay off in my interim performance review on Thursday.

Last week I sent Amanda and the girls to our hometown to hang out with family for a few days so I could refinish our floors. Before we moved into this house almost 4 years ago, I did the same thing in our bedroom and had pretty good results:

Before: During: After:

A couple of months ago, we decided to pull up the carpet in the corner of our dining room to see what kind of floors we might have underneath. We were happy to find hardwood and I knew that if I could make the floors in our bedroom look pretty good, the floors in the dining room and living room would look real nice. Here are some before pictures of the floors in the dining room and living room. The spots and streaks you see are where I filled holes and scratches with wood filler.

I rented a drum sander and edger from Mullin Rental, a few blocks away, and it was the same one I rented a few years ago, so I felt pretty confident in my ability to get all the sanding done in one day. I picked up the sander and started to work at about 8:00 Friday morning. I think it was around 10:00 that night before I was finally done with the heavy sanding. Joel even came over to help, but my original hope was to have the floor stained by the end of the day so I could do polyurethane the next day. I was way off.

I don't know if it's just a case of male arrogance or just that I am in general a pretty optimistic person, but I tend to really struggle with underestimating the time it's going to take to do projects. I also tend to think I'll be fine doing things by myself. This one was a classic example. I hoped to work Friday and Saturday, and then head up north to be with my girls most of the day Sunday and Monday. Instead, on Saturday afternoon around 3:00 I still hadn't gotten the floors stained. Fortunately for me, Jason Mackey called just then to see how it was going and offered to come over and help. He was a true "hero of the hardwood" (A special thanks to his wife Amy for bringing us Subway later on, too). Anyway, I ended up not finishing until 2:30 in the afternoon on Monday. Taking the advice of my mom, from now on I'm going to automatically double the time I estimate to do any project...if I think it sounds about right.

Here are some more pics showing some of the in between stages and eventually how the floors turned out. I have to say, this project was by far the most difficult one I've done on this house, but probably also the most rewarding. There are still a lot of nicks and scratches, and definitely a lot of squeaks, but with a house almost 100 years old, that's what we call "character."

Joel helping with the sanding
Contrast of a room half done
Bare wood in the living room

Bare wood in the dining room

First coat of stain in the living room

First coat of stain in the dining room

The finished living room

The finished dining room