Seriously, people, it’s not like we’ve been slackin’

It has been 2 weeks since I put up photos. So forgive me, there are a lot (and still many to come).

As you may recall, my dad flew in from Portland, OR on the 24^th of April. He was coming in to help us lay down the hardwood floor. My uncle Tommy (one of Dad’s three brothers was driving thru TX and stopped by – see photo below). Well, that was all good until Saturday afternoon when Dad had a bad run in with a skill saw (I kid you not). He almost (still hanging on by a bit) cut three fingers on his left hand off. After that “riveting” experience of getting hi to the ER, having them stabilize him, and getting him all sewn up so he could have surgery at home 2 days later – let’s just say we weren’t so keen on heading back to work with power tools.

That didn’t matter, we had to get done. As of May 1, we no longer had an apartment. we needed to get done. On Sunday we called in the troops. We had French, Caitlin, Micah and Ian on floor duty. While Erica, Nina and I packed up and loaded all of our belongings in to the U-Haul. See plan B was to put everything we owned in the truck and live on Micah and Erica’s couch. On Sunday night, at midnight Micah nailed the past piece of the hard wood floor down!!! We all cheered, went out on the porch for a beer and talked about how amazing the house looks (and the floor wasn’t even shellacked yet!) Jax's first rose of the season.

We knew that buying the unfinished, utility grade three, red oak was the cheapest way to go, because in the end it kicked your butt with the amount of elbow grease required to make it shine.

For those of you who have never done it here is the process:

1. Super coarse sand
2. Medium coarse sand
3. Filler for any holes (UG3 = lots of holes)
4. Super fine sand
5. Vacuum as good as possible
6. Wipe down with turpentine (phew!)
7. Coat of sealer
8. Coat of finisher
9. Buff with wicked crazy machine
10. Vacuum as good as possible
11. Wipe down with turpentine (phew again!)
12. Coat of finisher (repeat 1-3 more times based on need)
13. Done!

Some how our process wasn’t as pleasant, let me tell you our process:

1. Super coarse sand
2. Immediately, run over cord
3. Buy new cord at Home Depot, install new cord
4. Medium coarse sand
5. Filler for any holes (UG3 = lots of holes)
6. Super fine sand
7. Oh crap, not working
8. Super coarse sand
9. Medium coarse sand
10. Try belt sander (something has gotta give, what’s this stuff made out of anyways, steel? Jeeze!)
11. Super fine sand
12. Scrape up any left over filler (I swear this is steel!)
13. Vacuum as good as possible (AKA: buy $80 vacuum because Roomba ain’t havin’ it)
14. Wipe down with turpentine (phew!)
15. Coat of sealer
16. Coat of finisher
17. Vacuum as good as possible
18. Wipe down with turpentine (phew again!)
19. Buff with wicked crazy machine
20. Find out crazy machine has one wrong attachment
21. Scream at Lowe’s rental workers for not knowing head from ass
22. Get correct attachment
23. Buff again with wicked crazy machine
24. Vacuum as good as possible
25. Wipe down with turpentine (phew again!)
26. Coat of finisher (ran out of time, should have put third coat down, but didn’t – guess we will do that another time down the road)
27. Done!

So for all you out there that may some day want to put in your own unfinished hardwood floors let this be a lesson to you. Hire out.

Here are the floors before they are shellacked:

Close upIan trying to control the buffer, it was hysterical!

But, in the end, it looks pretty nice, dontcha think?

Ok, are you ready?

You sure?

OK! Here it is!!!!!