It's official: ACDC has bought a house.
The search is finally over. We fell for a house that we could actually commit to. And so we did.
Here's a sample of what has been consuming our lives over the last month.
First of all: we refinished the hardwood floors. Of the entire house. By ourselves. Sanding, re-sanding, sanding the corners, sanding some more, staining, re-staining, polyurethaning, buffing, more poly, more buffing, more poly. Wait, wait, wait.........okay, go ahead and walk on it now.
I would not recommend the DIY method, if you have a full-time job and not a lot of vacation. If you're considering doing this for the first time, my suggestion is to take whatever amount of time you think it will take, and then multiply it by three. Or four, if you're extra-ambitious like we were.
Here are some floor-finishing statistics:
Days we thought it would take, start to finish: 2
Days it actually took: 11
Trips to Home Depot: 17
Number of tools rented to do the job: 5, but that doesn't count repeat rentals of the same machinery - in which case the number goes up to about 20.
Number of different types of sanders we used: 7
Coats of stain we wanted: 1
Coats of stain we ended up doing: 2 (long story, but just going with 2 saved the day)
Number of days we used the fridge while it was plugged in on our back patio: 8
It was a huge learning experience, and it was also kind of fun (when it wasn't extremely frustrating) to work together on our home beautification. And now we have floors that we utterly slaved over, and we utterly love them. So. If you ever come to visit and you take a look at our floors and they somehow aren't particularly to your liking, do me a favor: lie. Tell us they're amazing. Please and thank you.
I don't really have any other stories - just some fun pictures. For example, look at the random assortment of light switches and covers you can find in The House (this isn't an exhaustive list):
And look at how high I've been able to stack the packing paper so far:
Here's our first meal in our first house:
The movers came before the floors were done, so they unpacked everything into the garage. Before David left for Korea, he got most of the furniture in the house, but our garage was still loaded to the ceiling with all our boxes. While he's been gone, I've been slowly by slowly whittling away at the mountain of boxes. This is all that is left:
And yes, I put a rug down, simply because I could.
And also, look what I built!
This probably isn't nearly as interesting to all of you as it is to me. I think about this house stuff A LOT now. But really, this post is just a teaser to get you extra-excited about a FUTURE post in which I will actually show you the finished product!! I promise I won't make you wait too long for The Video of The House of ACDC.
There's one more new post, read on, read on!!
5 comments:
Congrats on the new house!!! I'm excited to see more pics! I totally know the frustrating feeling of being in a slow transition. I didn't have the sand, re-sand, stain, re-stain sequence going for me, but the belly got in the way of progress. Yay for finally being moved in! PS I think the floors look superb.
can't wait to see the finished product:) It is SOOOO pretty!
Welcome to my life - projects. It's been a while since I've refinished a wood floor, mostly because I swore I would never do that again - way too much work. You should have called me and I would have told you to carpet. But, now that you've done it, it's beautiful and you can enjoy and swear you will never do it again.
Dad
Dad doesn't do that any more except for the staining, (0r painting), sanding, staining, sanding, staining, sanding process of cribs.....
Hmm....I don't think I wrote that last comment...not really sure who would have at 1:36 PM? Maybe mom and dad were at my house and I was signed in? Don't know, just pretty sure it wasn't me.
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