House: Almost there

Once we move in and have more time, we'll walk everyone through the work we did. Unfortunately, the presentation will be scatterred chronologically.

We'll post pictures and everything, too. But for now, here's a recap of this past weekend's work.

Thursday
Matt's sister Alli dropped cousin Pete from Seattle off at the apartment around 6p. We ate pizza, then got to work about 7p. Task at hand: tear up the carpeting in the two bedrooms and prepare the floors for sanding. We’ve treated the nursery as our lab for pretty much everything we’ve done at the house thus far, so we started there. The green (at least 20 years old) carpeting came up without too much trouble.

The tack strips, well, they were as easy as tack strips can be. Sometimes they splintered, sometimes they came up easily and brought the nails with them. After pulling the tack strips, we moved on to the carpet pad.

Unfortunately, the brown carpet “pad” seemed to have become one with the wood floor. To get that up from the floor, Matt had to use a chisel. This proved quite tedious and somewhat nerve wracking because we didn’t want to damage the floor, but that brown crap had to come off for us to sand. While Matt scraped the floor, Pete pulled carpeting in the master bedroom. By about 11p, the nursery floor was as clean as we could get it.

Matt then joined Pete in the master bedroom, and we finished pulling up the carpeting and carpet pad. This carpet was significantly newer than the other, so it and its pad came up easily. We called it a day at midnight after pulling up the staples from the floor. This left only the tack strips to be pulled Friday morning before we could get sanding.

Friday
We rented a floor sander from Home Depot at about 9:30a. Before we could sand, however, we sealed up the heat ducts, taped the electrical outlets, and pinned up a drop cloth to cover the door. We fired up the sander and let it go to work. Matt went over each floor with three different sandpaper grits. This took all of Friday and most of Saturday. Not much to report here. Basically just had to control the 100-pound sander and try to be as even as possible. Pete swept the floors after each time Matt went over them.

Matt's mom arrived Friday afternoon and cleaned the kitchen. Within about 10 minutes of her getting to the house, she declared the carpeting in the eat-in kitchen and the family room smelled too much like a litter box, so it had to go.

Saturday
Matt spent most of the day sanding the floors. During one of my breaks, I walked into the kitchen and saw my pregnant wife and AARP-eligible mom pulling up carpeting. During the next break, the two were pulling apart a railing. All this in preparation for the carpet installation this Thursday.

By the afternoon, the floor sanding was complete. So, we packed up the sander, returned it to Home Depot, and rented an edge sander. The floor sander can get as close as an inch to the base molding, so then you need an edge sander to get the rest. This 40-pound, "little" monster was ferocious. It took everything I had to keep it from pulling me for a ride across the floor.

Again, Matt started in the nursery. It went okay. I made the mistake of trying to “touch up” some spots in the middle of the floor. Well, the first coat of stain revealed just how much deeper the edge sander cuts into the wood than the floor sander. Fortunately we stained the nursery floor before I finished with the edge sander, so I learned not to take the edge sander anywhere other than, duh, the edge. We finished up around 9p.

Sunday
More sanding and staining. Finished the sanding by about 1p and returned it to Home Depot. Mom and Shana continued their work on the eat-in kitchen and the family room. Alli and friends arrived about 3p. Two of her friends primed doors, and Alli and our other cousin from Seattle, Alexandra, painted the bathrooms. Alex is in town to visit Marquette.

Mom left about 3:30p.

The girls left around 5:15p. Shana finished painting the bathroom in the master bedroom, and I wiped the master bedroom floor with a tack cloth to get it ready for the stain. Shana left about 6:30p. I stained the floor in the master bedroom and left the house at 8p.

Busy, busy weekend. Tonight, I’ll head over and apply the first of three coats of Polyurethane to the floors. The nice thing about this job: I can listen to the radio and not have to fight a machine.

Hard to believe we move this Friday.