Mmmmm, the Smell of Progress...

Usually a super toxic smell that I'm not allowed to be around at the moment. Awesome. Luckily, Mr. Moneypit and Mr. Chaz Adams rocked it out so I didn't have to. :)

So we rented the big floor sander from Home Depot - note to other DIYers... the sander rental; CHEAP! $50 for the day! Sweet!! Um... the sand paper, that you have to buy... to go with it... upward of $250 for what they "recommended" for our little one and a half rooms!!! But more on that later... The boys did the coffee room... (Nick, stylin' as always)

 And the family room

 We tried to protect our new carpet and semi-furnished bedroom as best we could... though perhaps ended up turning it into a bit of a scene from Dexter...

 Sunday we returned the rental with HALF the recommended sand paper, thanks to my dad lending us this baby to finish up...

 Not too shabby... (NOTE: that was not the ShopVac we used, we actually had [also from my dad] his heavy duty dust-wrangling attachment on the ShopVac - sort of like this - if you can get your hands on one of these if you're doing this yourself, DO IT, we didn't even need tack clothes, it got ALL the dust...)

 Back to the family room, where Nick was laying down the first layer of Poly while Chaz stained the coffee room our most favoritest stain color, Minwax's Dark Walnut.

Love love love... it's so exciting, I can't wait for them to be totally done! Which will be... later this week. Hopefully. 

Bad Blogger...

Is it possible my last post was over a MONTH ago??? In my defense, we've been working our tails off with the holidays, the show, and trying to get our C of O (the last stipulation for closing this book). Here's just a little picture tour of what's been going on...

Bedroom mouldings going up... 

 and up and up...

Master bath vanity needing finishing... oh, and mirrors...

How many Clarkson engineers kids does it take to lay a rug??

hehe, obviously kidding since they did an amazing job...

The soon-to-be-nursery rug down and moulding up...

 Damn crooked ass house... :)

Oh my goodness... that bedroom is starting to look like a BEDROOM!

Mouldings painted, carpet down...

Brick approves...

And last but not least... could that REALLY be the floor under all that mess??

Yes... yes it is... amazing what a little ok a lot of sanding and staining can do to original wood floors... (we did not do this, by the way, we left this one up to the pros...)

But now I'm reconsidering refinishing the rest of the third floor, rather than carpeting... 

That concludes our quick, up-to-date tour, more as it comes, promise!

Too Busy to Blog?

For shame!! Let's catch up, shall we? I have a bathroom and a wood floor post for you! But, since the photos for the bath are not quite "blog-ready" – let's cover the floor first...

We had this:

when we moved in; 12-15 boxes of pre-finished cherry hardwood (about 350 sq ft). In the house, ready to be installed. So this weekend we installed it in the hallway on the second floor. 

Saturday we had help from Nick's stepdad Dave, who, as usual, was pretty much a rockstar. First we put down the underlayment...

 Then the first row had to be nailed in by hand.

 Getting started was the hardest part...

Till we got to this...

I knew this part would be tricky... and after much debating...

We figured it out...

 More nailing, (and Genny Cream Ale) and by 8:30 pm we had....

Siiiigh, not bad for 12 hours... I guess... On to Sunday...

Sunday Meg and Paul came to help... and thanks to them, despite feeling like we'd both run a marathon, we were able to soldier on!

 

Until finally I turned around and saw Cole sitting in the middle of the finished part of the floor playing with his toys, and I said, "Meg!! Your son is actually sitting on the floor of my second floor playing!"

 That was pretty cool...

So by the end of Sunday... we had actually [almost] finished the whole hallway... 

Finished enough to take the rented nailer back at least!! Some last touches with our pneumatic nailer and we can put a bow on this baby... I'm pretty pleased with it... Which is good, because this might be the most extreme form of "nesting" known to man...

Ha!

Psssst!

{we have tile}

 !!!!!!