The Toadless Boy

WARNING: If you knew me before today, the most boring thing you’d want me to talk about is databases. Consider home improvement to be the new number one on that list. Being on the internet however, I found it useful when searching for refinishing hardwoods to read accounts of people doing it themselves. If not useful, it was at least comforting. This is my “public service,” deal with it. Plus I’m sure some of you are just happy to have something to read on your feed readers, you sad souls.

If I were an old person or an “inspirational” church sign, I would make some Extreme Makeover reference (I guess, the title already did, so I’m no better than them)

Tomorrow night, J and I will try to brave the smells of polyurethane to spend our first night in a home with new (looking) floors. It took a lot of hard work from us and my parents but we did it. Last weekend, we rented a floor sander from Lowe’s (a wonderful consumer experience, I recommend them) and started mid-morning on Saturday ripping away at the previous varnish. I did the first swipe and when I got done I looked at my parents and all three of us just hung our jaws open. In about one minute, I had quickly ripped the top layer of varnish off a 2 foot wide swipe in the master bedroom. There was no dust to be seen - something I was previously warned about. The vacuum attached to the sander had picked just about any of that up. The floor took on a bright light oak color and looked excellent.

“This is going to be easy,” my dad and I both said.

The bedrooms were easy like we expected. In sanding floors, you need to slowly work your way down in levels of “grit” sandpaper. I started with a 36, to a 50 and finished off with an 80, as recommended. We went and rented a second sander later that afternoon because we thought we’d breeze through all the sanding in one day after the way the bedrooms turned out. When we got back though, dad was riding round and round with the sander all throughout the living room. Behind him streaks of bright oak laid next to streaks of orange rough varnish. He looked down and said, “This isn’t going to work.”

While my mom was doing touch up work around the edges with a palm sander. I took to the orange streaks with another palm sander. Probably about 16-18 work hours later, I had hand-sanded the entire living room and hallway free from any sign of that orange color.

After spending alot of time alone with the old varnish, I think I eventually figured out why they weren’t easily sanded. The floors (at least their appearance) were in bad shape and the previous owners had been in that house for a while. Somewhere along the line they decided to refinish the floors but only in the high traffic areas. Whoever did them just sanded the top layer off but did not even out the uneven spots or where their couch had sat for 20 years. Any dips or low places held tons of this varnish/lacquer and it wasn’t coming up without some muscle power and precise sanding. Plus the stuff they used was some heavy duty stuff.
Wednesday morning, mom started putting polyurethane on while I was at work. After a coat a day for three days, we were able to marvel at the floors Friday afternoon and I finally walked across them early this (Monday) morning. So nine days later, I have excellent floors to show for it.

So a few things we can all learn from this (or at least me):

1. If you are looking to save money on hardwoods, I recommend doing it yourself. It certainly is damn hard work but it’s rewarding. I know if I hired someone to do it they would have just put the polyurethane over the old streaks. There is no way they would have spent that much time with my floors. Then I would have been stuck paying for something that didn’t look as good.
2. I spent around $300 dollars total for everything for an entire upstairs to be refinished. Local contracting estimates ranged from $1400-1700 so I saved some major coin.
3. I will not be helping you with your own sanding. I will offer as much advice as I can now that I feel like a veteran and I may devote half a day or something. But even if you died for my sins, I don’t know if I would sand another floor for anyone again.

In all the hubbub, I failed to get a true Before picture. I have a few Durings (R.I.P. Mitch) and a few Afters as well as a few sneak peaks of some rooms in my house. If I would get home from work before sundown, I’d try to get some more photos for all to see and give a true tour of the new house. Maybe over Thanksgiving break sometime. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait till you’re cool enough to get invited to my house.

Above is how the floors looked in between using the floor sander and a manual sander.

I’m slowly working away (right then I am changing papers) at the leftover varnish. Closer to the door is the more finished part. The other side of me has the gross orange-ish streaks.

Here is more of the work in progress.

This was after the second coat of polyurethane (it’s still drying)

Here is the master bedroom after a second coat. This is a composite of 10 photographs so that’s why the walls look funky. The foundation on the house is stable, don’t worry.

This is a composite of 12 photos (for some reason, 12 photos didn’t overlap at the windows) of the guest bedroom. It was their daughter’s so that’s why all the Starry Night hula-hula. That is the next project so our guests don’t have nightmares and want to cut their own ears off.

Man we had a great opening show last night. We opened with a perfect (not a note misplayed) version of “Woman”, followed by “Heart Shaped Box.” I nailed the slow and fast parts of “Heart Shaped Box.” Kurt Cobain our lead singer is not. I cringed everytime he opened his mouth on that song.

I’m not a fan of “Shout at the Devil” (next on the setlist) but you couldn’t tell by the way I nailed every lick. I got out the checkered guitar and we got the crowd really fired up with “Surrender.” They must have really liked it because they called us back with a hilarious, yet bitchin rendition of “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight.”

It feels good to be back at it. We’re really busy right now but surely Karamaz0v will be back on tour more this winter. With the way we came back full force without missing a single note on our first song, I know it’s going to be a good run.

Thank you! Good night!

This site isn’t necessarily under construction but my house and my life are.

Soon (hopefully this weekend), I will post pictures of the “property.” I spent all of last weekend (with help from my laboring parents and J) sanding all the upstairs hardwoods. I didn’t get a good “before” picture but I hope to have plenty of “after” pictures.

As a new homeowner, my number of posts related to home improvement may rival Battlecat, but I doubt it.

Further maintenance (one of the hardest words to spell in my opinion, next to “desperate”) [edit: I still misspelled it] unrelated to homes: I have added another overlooked blog in my blogroll. I have more blogs on my reader but I don’t want to really creep them out because they don’t know me yet I know them. It’s like if I started calling Jack from Lost my friend or something.

Edit: Also due to heavy construction, previously mentioned festivities surrounding GHII will be postponed until after J can relax from her semester finals and we have a place to sit in our house.

Last night, like the first robin of spring or picking the first ready ear of corn, I enjoyed the first sign of a changing season. I am referring to a Christmas Coke of course.

Two nights ago, I spied a bespectacled Santa (yes, Santa’s back with the polar bears) looking over his glass bottle at me in the refrigerator. Mom had picked him up earlier that day at Hy-Vee. After already having two Cokes that day, I played it cool and didn’t tear in to the 12 pack immediately. I wanted to savor the first one without an already sugar coated tongue from the previous ones. So the next night, J and I came home with Hardee’s in hand and had ourselves each a Christmas Coke. I almost followed it with a grab of my belly, a “Ho Ho Ho” and a spin of the Carpenters’ record.

Some of you may wonder what the hell I am talking about. Why am I getting my panties in a wad about some labeling on a Coke package? Well it has been scientifically proven by me that Christmas Coke tastes better. “Oh MarkFore,” you say, “it’s just psychological. All Coke is the same.”

Well I’ve considered this option and it is simply not true. For years, I would stand up on crates of Christmas Coke preaching that it tastes better and no one would agree. So I stopped preaching and one day I heard my friend Adam (he went to school for longer than I did so he’s obviously smarter) casually mention how it tastes better. We both just looked at each other. I think we wanted to hug. We had found our Coke-mate.

Luckily, I didn’t have to completely follow through on that because soon (after long periods of denial) J started to notice the difference too. There is no way J would let me win if it was just psychological.

Don’t even get me started on the subtle differences from 12-pack to 12-pack. I’ll just say this, sometimes they make/package the normal Coke way too near the diabetic’s Coke.

I haven’t voted yet (I’m wanting to break the Republican hearts at the last minute) but I will be sure to bring a paperweight with me. I think my mom voted on an electronic one last year. I had the choice so I refused to.

You’re probably sick of making choices today but here are two more questions. Remember these are opinions, there are no right or wrong answers:

1) On a foggy morning with low visibility like today on Route 1 with a speed limit of 55, in what manner should a person drive?

a) At their usual 75, tailgating the slowpoke in front of them.
b) At a very safe 40 miles an hour so everyone behind them can no what speed to maintain to get their bumper smeared
c) Without lights on because they can see everything they need to
d) Just like me

2) What is the best album for listening to in the car and screaming every lyric with no shame?

Anybody from my ones of readers had experience refinishing hardwood floors? I’m looking to take on this task this weekend and would appreciate words of encouragement or guidance from those with experience.

A little girl I know has a daddy that loves her very much. So much that he jeopardizes his cool, nonchalant style with cheesy, but sweet musical montages to “Isn’t She Lovely?” When J and I watched this, J gave me a history lesson on Stevie Wonder.

“Did you know Stevie Wonder wrote this song for his daughter when she was born?” (Wikipedia confirms F!)

I asked “How would he know?”

Then the motivation behind the song really became clear. “He really wants to know?!”

Tomorrow is a very important day. If you’ve forgotten I am writing this so you won’t.

Maybe you will be sitting at work and this gentle reminder on your screen will help change the outcome of the rest of your life. It may not be important to the rest of the world (right now at least) but Americans will be talking all day and probably for the next two years about this day.

Tomorrow brings Guitar Hero II to the Playstation 2 console in the US. I can’t speak for everyone else (I’ll be too busy playing) but I will be holed up in my basement practicing all my licks. I wouldn’t care if you told me my only shot at having a say in government was this very moment.

Nice try. You’ll get the guitar as soon as I’ve perfected the solo on “War Pigs.”

I have two new links to friends’ blogs on the right (if you don’t disable CSS, I reckon).  One is a recent addition to the blog world, TPhan. I’ve always thought “What if she had a blog? What would she have to say about this?”  Now I think, “Finally.”

The other link is to FTPete Giuseppe Burns’ blog. He is not new to the blog thing I just didn’t manually copy him properly from my RSS feeds. That’s why we let computers do everything for us anymore: human error. I’ve been reading at home on my Google Reader I swear but now everyone can.

Okay hopefully that’s the last we’ll have to use the word “blog world” for a while (I already changed it from “blogosphere”).