Well...Tim and Donald returned on Thursday night to work on the floors some more. We'd hoped that they would finish, but no such luck. They got most of it done, including a coat of poly on most of the floors, but didn't get the hallway or master bedroom finished. They left around lunchtime on Saturday to head back home, and Tim promised to return on Monday to finish the job. There was some question about one heavy coat (thought by all to be a bad idea) vs. a couple of lighter coats, the second of which Brandon and I would have to do ourselves unless Tim returned yet again. Not sure if the message didn't get to Tim in time, but half the bedroom turned white. We guess it was due to a coat that was a little too heavy, but we're not really sure. We didn't think to take a photo, but it had the appearance of old, moldy boards--all the dark grain lines in the wood had turned a grayish white! This was only on half the room, and around some of the edges of the room. Brandon and I arrived at the house last night to discover this, and discuss our options. We could go rent a sander, try to figure it out on our own, and redo that half of the bedroom (and the end of the hall, which didn't seem to get a good sanding the first go-round). We could put a second coat on anyway, and hope the first would regain some normalcy and color (doubtful this would happen). Brandon was exhausted and ready to go home, but we headed over to Lowe's to see what we could figure out.
We bought lots of sandpaper for our electric hand sanders, more poly just in case, rollers, paint pans, etc. We finally got back to the house around 9:30pm, having picked up Chick-Fil-A for dinner (Does anyone know why there would have been 20+ cars in the drive-thru of the Camp Creek Chick-Fil-A at 9pm on a Tuesday night??? The whole place was packed!) We got back home, sat on the front porch eating our dinner, wondering if our neighbors thought we were strange since we always eat dinner on the front porch...we have no furniture anywhere else. Next door neighbor Chris came home and we helped locate his cat, who had gotten out at some point during the day. Then we started sanding. And sanding. And sanding. We went through several sandpaper refills, and Brandon tried to catch his sander on fire (when he dumped the sawdust, there was actually smoke rising from it!), and finally we decided we were done around, oh, I guess it must have been around 11:30pm or midnight. Then we swept, vacuumed, wiped, and vacuumed again. We started putting the poly on and it was BUBBLY! Turns out Brandon shook the can rather than stirring it, which is apparently the biggest no-no of all when it comes to floor refinishing (at least according to all the websites--it's on the Internet, it must be true!). We debated on whether or not to open another can and start over, but forged on, bubbles or no bubbles. If there end up being bubbles once it dries, I will resist the urge to say told you so ;) Actually, as long as it's not WHITE this time, I'll be cool with whatever it looks like.
We did the bedroom with a roller, then went over it with a brush as we did each pass with the roller (before it dried) to get rid of the bubbles and smooth it out. I did the edges with the brush, and then started on the hall, turning off lights as I went (wouldn't be able to get back to the switch once we painted ourselves out of the house). We worked our way towards the front door, where we'd put all our stuff, and finally finished around 1am. We did a lot of the poly in the dark, so I hope it doesn't look that way once it dries. It was really hard to see where we were painting it on, so I hope it doesn't look awful. Will try to take photos tonight, when we go to put on the second coat if it's dry enough.
On Sunday, we went to the Scott Antique Market to look for doors and anything else cool for the house. We had gone to pick up an outdoor ceiling fan from someone on Craigslist, but when we got there, Brandon decided he didn't like it, so we apologized and left ;) We ended up spending the fan money on a church pew for the front porch, instead! We got it for $85 (down from asking price of $125), and we think it's from Macon. The guy we bought it from is the same one I bought my vanity from, and he's from Macon, so most of his stuff comes from there. The church pew needs a little cleaning up, but all in all it's in pretty good shape and it looks good. We also picked up a silver wall mirror ($5!) for the soon-to-be-dusty-purple half bath.
We also seem to have found a buyer for the carpet that we pulled out of the house the day of the closing (that seems like ages ago already). They plan to come get it this weekend, and we plan to move in on Saturday, so hopefully it will all work out.
Here are the results all the hard work!
Living room:
This is the bathroom threshhold (threshold?). (It still looks like this, even after moving in.)
Back bedroom/den. This room has the most gorgeous floor of all the rooms.
Hallway. I hate this picture of me! But I include it because it's apparently the only one of the hall... Notice how the hall is shiny but the living room is not, but it gets shiny again before the front door?? Apparently the more coats you put on, the more matte it becomes (satin finish poly).
Here's a close-up. I'm glad we caught this with the camera, because we were beginning to think we had lost our minds. The hall was shiny, and the living room was matte, except for a small area near the door. We thought the poly was defective (either too shiny or too matte), so we did a test area on a matte section. It came up shiny. So we went to work recoating the living room and the dining room. Halfway through, we realized that the coat we were putting on was making everything matte, not shiny. So we stopped. You can still see a couple of spots that we missed, and eventually we'll redo either the hallway (to be more matte) or the living room and dining room (to be more shiny).
Master bedroom:
Office:
Living room and front door:
Dining room:
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