Making It Work: A Cluttered Home Life

One of my favorite 5-year-olds was at the house yesterday for the first time. Trying to explain why we had lots of furniture in some rooms and none in others was pretty funny. She didn't mind the mess as long as she got to play with Sherpa and repeatedly check our mail since we didn't have anything.

Here's what she saw. We're pretty cramped but keeping good attitudes!

The right half of the office-which-is-now-our-bedroom

Another view

Yes, we do have two TVs in this room. Only one is hooked up; you can consider the other decoration. (And yes, I do sleep against the wall. It's kind of like a safety net...like when you were a kid and had gates on your crib or bunk bed!)

This is the guest room. One month ago it looked very clean and put-together. Now it has become storage for things like pictures and the futon mattress.

Oh, and dresses. I had to clean out the hall closet where my dresses were since everything in that part of the house is now covered in an inch of sawdust.

For a small room, it sure holds a lot!

This is our kitchen. With a couch in it. And a dog. We're slowly taking over every inch Sherpa has to roam...woops.

This is interesting. That door goes out to the deck and backyard. We (Sherpa included) have to squeeze between the couch and the wall to get out. Or to get to the basement steps which are located across from that door.

The mudroom aka Sherpa's room. Again, we apologize daily for taking over his territory. 

Reno Redo

You know how they say, "third time's the charm?" We're really hoping for that to come true on the second try. Unfortunately our two weeks of moving out were mostly in vain. The living room floor didn't take, so we had to start over. The good news, our silver lining if you will, is that the hall worked out okay so we don't have to move out again. We'll just have to be pretty strategic in our next staining. Here's a pic of the living room floor with two coats of stain, one coat of poly, several days after it should've dried:

As you can see it's just way too shiny. The poly never fully dried--rather than being tacky to the touch, it was actually oily. We determined the cause of the mess to be two key things: one, the temperature dropped and we hadn't yet turned on any heat, and two, regardless of the apparatus used to apply stain, you still need to work it in with a rag. To correct these issues we now have heat running so our next coats should dry quicker (and without millions of fuzzies blowing through the ducts since we've given them time to clear out), and if we use the staining mop pads for this try, we'll go slowly and wipe each swipe with a rag to work in and remove excess stain.

So where are we now? We spent the weekend starting over. Thankfully we have a friend who owns a sander so we didn't have to shell out $50 or so to rent one. And we were able to take our time and do it in two days. Andrew sanded the living room and the master bedroom (from a previous mess-up accounted here) with a coarse grit (I think 36) the first day, then he sanded with 60 followed by 100 on the second day. Below are some pictures of the process:

Andrew started by scraping some of the excess stain off the floor, leaving this interesting design. 

Once we determined using a 36-grit was the way to go, Andrew stopped scraping and started sanding.

The borrowed sander

The finished product

You may can see a dark edge in the picture above. We plan to rent an edger this weekend rather than spend extra time sanding the edges with a palm sander. Once that is sanded, we'll probably divide the living room in two or three areas to begin staining. We host a Bible study at our house each week, so we want to be able to work and maintain some normalcy (our definition has obviously flexed somewhat with this project!) at the same time. 

All in all, counting the hallway as a room, we did 3 out of 5 rooms correctly the first time. Not too shabby for first-time floor refinishers. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure if the next home we buy needs new floors, we'll install hardwood over refinishing!

It's been too long...!

Eek! Where did the last two-ish months go?! After my last post in July, I left for Alabama for a "business" trip, came home for a bit, headed to Maine for vacation, then a quick trip to the Adirondacks...and I have no idea where September went. I promise to do better. I hope :)

Now for updates!!

Two of the three bedrooms are 98% complete. My dad and step-mother flew up for a visit last month (that was my September excuse!) so we completely finished the guest room sans crown molding. I also have a really neat idea for a headboard that I hope to tackle soon. The office/third bedroom is done minus the crown molding and a tiny bit of electrical. I'll post pics of that soon...when I can get back there. More on that soon.

We started on the master bedroom floors about a week and a half out from the parental visit. We used a much thicker brush for the stain thinking we would need fewer coats in the end. Bad idea. The first coat wasn't dry by the end of the week, nor by the time our visitors arrived, nor by the time they left! Rather than looking like the other rooms where the wood grain shined through, this looked like we had painted our floors. So we started sanding it back up to start over.

In the middle of the bedroom fiasco, we got the opportunity to move out for a week to work on the living room and hallway floors. Here's a before pic:

I had to take this with my phone so it's a bit dark. This room had the best floors by far out of the entire house. (Well...except the whole "carpet in the kitchen" thing.) No deep stains, and Andrew sanded them really well. We moved out on a Sunday, I stained the hallway on Monday and the living room on Tuesday. In the picture you can see where I stained the perimeter with a brush. We used a mop to do the rest of the room. I highly recommend getting the brush/mop apparatus! It made staining so much easier.

You can get lamb's wool pads for these, but the guy at Lowe's told us the cheaper version would do just as well. You just need to be careful to smooth out where you start and stop with the mop--it can leave a mark or small bubbles. Overall though, it was a fabulous purchase. Below is a pic of the first coat:

We left that island area because we need to sand the closet area a little more. Once we poly the rest of the floor we'll go back to that area and blend it with the rest. 

All of those pictures were from last week, so we're now on week two of being out of the house. Last Sunday we touched up the entire area and are now waiting for it to dry before doing the poly. More pics of work to come soon, plus a new feature for the deck!