Progress

The living room is painted and the first floor is sanded and polyurethaned. We are now going to watch Walking Dead.

Floors!

We did it. We sanded the whole first floor! Chris rented the sander on Friday and my parents came from Maine. (It was their first time seeing the house and they LOVED it! Hurray!) When we arrived, Chris already had the dining room sanded--the floors are so pretty! The parents and I worked on edges while Chris worked with the U-Sand, starting with 40-grit and finishing with 80 and 120. We got the dining room completely done that night, and the whole first floor edged. Alex and her family brought delicious Riverview pizza and beer for dinner and we ate at our dusty dining room table in our dusty house and we were completely happy!

Saturday we worked on finishing edging on the second floor, which was much more challenging--the floors are oak and finished with shellac or wax, and whatever it was kept gumming up the sandpaper. It worked best when we did long sweeping strokes so it didn't melt the finish. Big pain. Chris's dad John also arrived to start working on new stairs to our basement and got to do some sweet demo--I love it when someone fearlessly chops open walls! And Chris's mom Mary arrived with delicious sustaining pastries. Thank goodness for gooey carbohydrates!

After some frustrating time with the sander on the second floor we had an equally frustrating trip to Home Depot (unimpressed with everything about that place). The kitchen floor is less than perfect but we have decided to embrace the flaws (old drum sander marks and uneven boards) and, tired and dusty and a bit crabby, we decided the day just needed to be over. We were a bit disappointed not to get more done, but Chris was excellent at putting it into perspective: we got the Whole First Floor Done. We learned that the second floor is going to be our Very Big Challenge, but we are going to do our best to figure it out, and if we can't we will form out a new plan of action!

Erin's favorite tools of the weekend: Ryobi Corner Cat (thanks Uncle Bobby!) and my Miele vacuum.

Chris's favorite tool of the weekend: U-Sand sander.

In other news, we have color samples on the wall and are mostly in love. The big question is the dark teal in the living room. You'll see it in the photos and I would welcome some feedback!

Yeah, it's ours

Everything went fine on Wednesday. Monday night I got walloped by the Norovirus. On a positive note, I did not spend Tuesday worrying about house buying. I only worried about sitting upright for 1 hour to sign papers. By Wednesday morning, I felt well enough and we got our house. We have way more to say about this day, but little time to do it. We will very soon.

Today, I met my Dad at the house after I finished work. He cut one of the cabinets to hold our new dishwasher. We also took down the greasy oven vent that vented to nowhere. I played around with sanding the edges of floors (with very helpful advice from Dad). Tomorrow, we rent a Usand and with the help of Erin's parents, hope to get at least the first floor sanded this weekend.