This wasn't as easy as we thought...

We have had a long weekend working on the floor. We finished sanding this afternoon (finally) and have applied the first coat of stain. It has a been a tedious day. Justin operated the sander while I tried to keep the dust sitution under control. I have always hated dusting as a chore, and I spent most of the day doing it! It got everywhere and we ended up putting towels under the doors so we could actually make progress.

The good news is that the floor looks great so far! Although it is getting old fast, I think all the work we are doing will be worth it in the end.

This is a shot of the sanded floor in the living room in its raw condition.

The first coat of stain! It has a nice glow, I think!
The weekend was made more fun by the fact that my sister, Andrea, and cousin, Katie, came to visit from Fargo! They also brought Andrea's dog, Jake, who got right down to business barking and annoying the neigbors (they'll get over it though!). Once they arrived, my usefullness diminished quickly as we popped open a bottle of wine and excused ourselves to the deck in the back yard. Tomorrow my mom is coming and we are going to paint the kitchen.
Well, I have to go because...guess what? We are going back to the house to apply the second coat of stain at midnight! Yeah! I don't want to sleep! Sleep is boring!

Anyone feel like treating me to a manicure?

Hola...I don't have any exciting news dealing with the house. All I've done for the two days of this week and the last few days of last week before the long weekend is scrape glue residue off the floors of the bedrooms. I mentioned the residue in an earlier post. We were hopeful that sanding would remove it, but we experimented and discovered that it would require massive quantites of sand paper...so...I've been scraping it off.

It is an inch by inch process, and holding the scraping knife kills my hand! For some reason, it makes my little finger numb...I think the way I hold it makes it press on a nerve or something. The good part about this project is that I have been able to listen to alot of my old cd's! I listen and reminisce about lounging around in my room at KD with my roommate...ahh...Roommate...(that would be Johnny Cash and Pat Green cds that we were listening to)... sitting in the bathroom at KD spending an hour straightening my hair on Friday afternoon while my straight haired friends curled theirs... laying on a blanket on the lawn and hearing music through the windows when the weather got nice in the spring, waiting for the guys to stop and talk (they always did!)... riding the bus with my high school basketball team, singing while we made ourselves matching "lucky" hair ties for our games...I could go on and on! I suppose I should get a new cd or download some songs so I can have music that will remind me of my first weeks with this house!

Weekend of Productivity

Hello! I appologize for not writing anything for a few days. All weekend we were busy painting! Justin's parents came to visit and we painted continuously all weekend. We barely took time to eat! I haven't taken photos of the painted rooms yet, though, so you will have to see them later...probably tomorrow!

Tonight I will write about our linoleum removal adventure last week. The wood was covered with carpet, except for a little piece of linoleum in front of the door. It was glued down with the intent that it would never be removed! We scraped at the glue residue for awhile. Justin finally figured out that shaving it with a planing tool made it easier to scrape. We eventually scraped it all away, and the floor underneath looks fine! I'm just REALLY glad it was only a small area, not a whole room!

Each thing we do makes it seem more real!

The Not So Perfect Floor Covering

We now have possession of the house. We finished the closing process at around 4:00. It went fine and the real estate company even gave us a generous gift card to be used at the mall! New shoes and purse for me! Haha, that was a joke...sort of... We went over there right away to start pulling out the carpet. The carpet covered the living room at the two upstairs bedrooms. It wasn't bad carpet-we just like the wood floor it was covering better. We made an interesting discovery in the bedrooms. There were two layers of carpet! Under the current carpet, there was an older layer of brown and gold shag carpet! Under the shag was the padding, which was pretty gross. It was disintegrating into a dusty material in the high traffic areas, and around the edges of the rooms and in the closet it was resistant to removal. Fortunately, the living room and hallway didn't have the extra layer, so the pad in there was newer and was easy to removed.

Hopefully the leftover residue will come off with sanding. Don't worry, this task wasn't was bad as it looks.

This is the living room floor. I think it looks great! The person in the photo is our friend Jason Webster. He is pulling out staples and nails. What a good friend he is!

The Perfect Floor Covering

We close tomorrow! I can't wait!

I was looking at a Pottery Barn catalogue today and I saw a picture of a beautiful, catalogue perfect room. There was a rug on the floor that I loved!



Imagine my delight when I looked at the information and discovered that those geniuses at Pottery Barn named it "The Maren Rug"!

http://www.potterybarn.com/products/p6299/index.cfm?pkey=crugs%2Dblue%2Dgreen





I have to have this rug, or else a similar one!