Day 2: Still No Ryan

I'm pretty sure by day two my Mom was regretting her decision to come help, or atleast I would have. Ryan had called Monday morning and let us know that he was stuck in Jersey and wouldn't be making it back to DC until Tuesday, which meant one more day not in our bedroom. I was not a happy camper.... at all. With that in mind, we continue through our list and touch up the paint on the walls and the window trim.  Apparently, when my Mom was a child and her family was getting ready to move in to their first house, her Uncle was obsessed with smooth window sills. Since our house is around 100 years, the window sills were far from smooth, so my Mom and I set out to make Uncle Sal proud and we sanded down the window sills and re-painted them.

Terrified of getting the white trim paint on the beloved floors

Ryan calls and the snow in Jersey is holding him captive so he won't be able to leave until later on Tuesday, which means no second coat until Wednesday. At this point, I'm tired and cranky. My Mom and I had been working on projects constantly since she arrived (not to mention she had me up at 6am) and that was just not acceptable. So my Mom and I do what any two women would do, we decide that we will do the second coat of polyurethane ourselves. We figure this shouldn't be any harder than re-upholstering the arms so we set out in search of Ryan's supplies. About ten phone calls to Ryan later, we have all the supplies we need and we put down the second coat.

Our blood, sweat and tears.. aka our floors

Note the electrical outlet that is just chilling on the window sill. Since the house was built before the electric was installed the master bedroom's outlets were all 3-D.  3-D is cool for movies, not so cool for bedrooms.

They're Not called Drums for Nothing

FINALLY, the floors are starting to resemble floors (sort of, but after all those mineral spirit fumes, definitely). So we look at our hand sander, that we borrowed from the best landlord ever, and we look at the larger sander, that we borrowed from Ryan's parents, and quickly come to the conclusion that neither of these will do. We call around and find out that Home Depot rents drum sanders. So we head on over to Home Depot where we have the oldest, cutest man helping us (note: this does not negate the fact that he only uses one finger while typing and takes about an hour to check us out) and pick up our drum sander for a day of fun. Oh, what fun a drum sander is. I now understand why it's called a "drum" sander, this is when those ear plugs most certainly come in to play.

Some improvement

Ryan with the drum sander

After a few times sanding down the floors, we're definitely seeing progress.

Raw Floors

Although we have come a long way, it is now painfully clear that even though we'll be moving our stuff in to the house on Saturday, we will not be moving in to the bedroom....

The Attack of the Previous Owners' Bad Taste

Fast forward a day and we're back at the house, after work, trying to get these floors done before we move in at the end of the week. Ryan spends the whole night trying to get this black, tar-like goo off of our floors and he does a pretty good job.

Ryan scraping up the black goo

Mistake #3: Thinking that glue is all that would be on top of the 100 year old floors.

Clearly, whoever lived there before us, and then before them, had good taste because under the awesome black tiles (and glue) there was, once again, another surprise. Painted wood! Not to mention the part of the floor where they had moved the radiator and left a gaping hole. Oh, how I would have liked to meet these people and their awesome decision making skills, or lack there of. So we do what any young couple would do who have no idea what to do, we wipe down the floor with Mineral Spirits* (and in the process get high off of the fumes). And wallah! we're finally starting to see the floors! 

Clearly, we have low expectations at this point.

* I would not suggest doing this. It's very flammable but clearly, at this point, we didn't care. Blame it on the fatigue or the laziness. You take your pick.

Carpet, Tiles and Glue, OH MY!

So after what felt like years, but was actually about 10 hours, of Ryan chipping away at what we can only assume is asbestos tile (yes, we wore masks), the floors were clear of tiles. Of course, what comes with tiles is glue, black glue, all over the wood floor. Oh, happy day.

And this is what the tiles had in store for us...

Mistake #2: Look in to how to get the glue up BEFORE you get the tile up. It will save you time and sanity.

Luckily, my brother-in-law is a flooring expert over at Lowes so we call him in a panic asking what to do about the glue. He tells us the glue remover to get and we head over to Home Depot. Crisis Averted.

We bring glue remover home and it is the nastiest, tar-like substance I have ever seen. Ryan might as well have been paving a road with this stuff but instead, we were using it on our 100 year old wood floors, greattttt. It gets EVERYWHERE. My cat even managed to get it on the top of our toilet (oh the joys of having a cat). If there is one thing I NEVER want to do again, it's deal with this goo.

The black hole aka our room

Ryan gets all the nasty, black goo down and we wait a few hours. It's supposed to dry and just magically flake off but, of course, it doesn't. What it does is turn in to a black mess of a floor. After much disappointed, Ryan puts down another coat and we let it sit over night and retire back to the apartment... that we rent... even though we just bought a house. Oh the joys of home ownership!