Happy Halloween Part 2

Around here, we take Halloween very seriously.
By we, I mean me. It's my favorite holiday. I am now going to unveil my costume, which Linda has lovingly and patiently helped me to make for over a month!

Marie Antoinette, with ghost from Pac Man (my friend DJ)

Happy Halloween Part 1

A glimpse

I snapped some quick pictures last night of the progress on my phone...

Josh's closet :)

Shiny floors!

Somehow we don't have a toilet seat. Hmm.

There is beauty

Everywhere.

Even in J cutting metal poles for the closet. :)

How to refinish wood flooring

In case you were wondering, here's a quick explanation of how you can refinish your wood floors.

First you'll want to remove ALL of the nails and staples that are above floor level.

Then you'll want to rent a sander, a DRUM sander, like this:

You'll have to sand straight, with the grain, across the floor.

 The edges (as Koal, painted like a skunk for Halloween, would tell you) will not get sanded by this sander. You'll need a hand belt sander (power tool).

My dad used a LOT of sanding rolls in the sander...maybe 5-6 80 grit (the main grit we used) and some 65 and a couple of 100s. Sandpaper gets more fine as you go up in number, so the 65 grit is really going to take a lot of floor off, where as the 100 grit is going to take the least amount off.

Then you stain. I bought mahogany color stain. It's oil-based and smells awful. Pour into a paint tray and then apply with a lambswool applicator.

Lambswool applicator on a pole. ** this is not my house or my lambswool**

This is what it would look like to do this with an applicator on a pole. *Again this is not me or my house*

 I found that the pole system wasn't working so well for  me. I did the entire first coat with a hand applicator (not pictured, but the process looks like the man below, except I had plastic bags on my shoes and no knee pads). The second coat I started with the pole and finished by hand again.

What it looks like to sand by hand. *Again not my floor and I don't know this man--but those floors are gorgeous!*

Tonight and tomorrow I need to put at least two coats of clear polyurethane to seal the floor. I'll let you know how it goes!

J is amazing...

While I was staining away, J accomplished a LOT...let's take a look:

Beautiful countertops and sinks

New windows

Upper cabinet and new light fixtures (yes, we have a window to put there, and yes it is not in for a reason)

Lower cabinets

Wooly J works on the closet

New fan

Yes, this is my closet. Don't be jealous. (or do, it's cool. hehe)

Fans installed

J is talented, and I am lucky!!

Floors...?

So my wonderful dad sanded the living room floors and we gave them another try.

 They looked great around the edges; the floor is really beautiful...but unfortunately the spots in the finish left stains in the wood.

This has nothing to do with the floors, but my friend Emily's puppy, Moose, was here to make the day cuter!

So we decided that we'd need to stain them in order to make use of them, and the stain would have to be dark.

And ta-da!

Those floors

We are giving them another chance, people! It turns out that the floor sander we had wasn't the right type for sanding off the finish and yuckiness. My dad has nicely volunteered to sand them on Saturday with the correct sander! I'll keep you posted.

Yucky floors

See the scratch marks around the edges? Glue.

Well I had hoped that we could salvage the wood flooring that was underneath the carpet in our new house. We pulled up the carpet, and some of the floor looked good. I thought it would sand nicely, but it didn't. :(

This hasn't been sanded yet; we pulled up the living room carpet and it was pretty ugly underneath.

EWWWWW

The little globs are pieces of padding that were stapled to the floor. Each staple has to be pulled out with pliers.

Jeff said at once point that he'd rather buy us carpet than have to sand the floors any longer. It was pretty awful. OHHHH WELLLLL...