Ups and Downs

Renovating a house is the emotional equivalent of a roller coaster:  lots of ups and downs, and you spend a lot of the time with a wierd feeling in the pit of your stomach.  Since I'll be sharing a lot of our "up" moments as we hit our renovation milestones, and in the interest of full disclosure, here is a little story about the perils of late-night home renovation...

In early June I became a bit rabid on the subject of FINISHING THE FLOORS.  Not re-finishing, but finishing re-finishing, if you see what I mean.  As in, COMPLETING the floors.  Freshly refinished hardwoods really need a couple of weeks to cure before you place anything on them, meaning we couldn't move in until they were cured.  A marathon of sanding, coating, buffing and re-coating commenced.  Since my husband carried the bulk of the sanding burden, I generously supervised the polyurethane application.  OK, so that's a little revisionist history.  The truth is that I am a snobby polyurethane perfectionist and he was terrified to pick up an applicator for fear of making a mistake that would harden into permanent marital history on our floor. 

I had a pretty high opinion of my poly-applying skills by the time we reached the third and final coat, and as the old saying goes...pride goeth before an unfortunate incident involving highly flammable compounds.  Due to the scheduling conflicts of work and four kiddos (aka Real Life), floor refinishing sessions took place around midnight.  I was a little high on adrenaline and VOCs as I inched toward the living room exit around 1am.  The unfortunate incident occurred with approximately 12 square feet of floor left to go in my 1500 square foot project. To backtrack a bit, my charming 1930s living room has an equally charming lack of overhead lighting.  This means that it is lit entirely by lamps, which is only a minor inconvenience unless one is applying something wet and sticky to the floor, requiring one to work entirely by the light of a naked bulb screwed into a desk lamp plugged into a wall outlet and perched precariously (yes, precariously, hint hint) on the end of the mantelpiece.  I am not actually sure which elbow, foot, pole or other appendage nudged the cord, but the end result was a broken light bulb. On the floor.  Covered with something the approximate consistency of honey.  At 1am. In the dark. I was fortunately distracted from the complex problem of how to clean up broken glass from wet polyurethane by an additional exciting plot twist.  You may have forgotten (I did) that polyurethane is in fact a petroleum product.  It turns out that if one drops something very hot, say for instance a light bulb filament, onto a liquid petroleum product, say for instance polyurethane, it ignites.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I set my floor on fire.  Just a little bit. 

Smothered the flames.  Wiped up most of the glass with mineral spirits (at least what  I could find of it in the dark).  Went home to bed, an humbler renovator. 

New House Update: Weeks 3-4

Ok, so I admit I'm a little behind in posting renovation project updates.  But putting down polyurethane til midnight everynight doesn't give a person the overwhleming urge to blog (not to mention the lightheadedness...but more about that later).  Clearly we're way past weeks 3-4 into the project now, but I'll try to keep things chronological.  When last we met, most of the demolition was complete, and the non-demolished half of the downstairs re-painted.  Stuff that happened in the latter half of May:

1.  Our master bath tub was delivered and we moved it into the house.  This sounds like a small thing, but since the tub is made of cast iron and weighs 500 lbs empty, it was really quite a BIG thing.  Our friend Adrian whipped up a furniture dolly in his garage and our strong-backed friends Brad and Carla helped with the actual lifting.  Lucky us!  Adrian will get his furniture dolly back soon...right after we figure out how to get the 500 lb tub off of it. 

2.  We learned that our 80 year old hardwood floors were coated not with polyurethane but with shellac.

3.  We learned that when you attempt to screen and recoat shellac with a modern buffer, it melts.  Sigh.

4.  We took a deep breath and put in some very, very long days sanding our downstairs hardwoods back to bare wood, rather than the quickie screen and recoat we had initially planned.  Although we both admit they look LOVELY afterward, and in retrospect are glad we did it. 

5.  We got a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Sonya and the boys got a new tire swing.  I wish I had photos to share of the drama involved in hanging, un-hanging and re-hanging the tire swing, but I was too busy freaking out that someone was going to fall from the long, rickety extension ladder and/or knock someone else unconscious with the 10 foot long McGyver-like homemade pole/hook tool. 

6.  I put our kitchen barstools together.  Given that my kitchen currently has no bar...or cabinets, walls or in fact a real floor as of the end of June, this was clearly a bit on the optimistic side.  But a girl can dream. 

Enjoy the slideshow...more updates and a few harrowing tales coming up soon. 

Mark's New Website

Mark has launched a new website for his law practice.  Looks pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves!  Check it out at www.appealnc.com

Lazy Children Beware

My older kiddos are both now fluent readers, which provides a whole new perspective on the grown-up world.  Overheard from the back seat of my car this weekend:

S, age 6:  "Do you think that's REAL?"
B, age 9:  ".....no.  Nobody would do that."

I looked out the window to see what they were so impressed by, and saw the following yard sign:

"FREE LAZY BOY". 

Demolition Derby

For those who follow us more in blog world than in the actual world, you may not yet be aware that we have given in to a longstanding addiction and bought a new, old, house.  A whole house renovation is underway, one section at a time.  Eventually we hope to make something about the house BETTER, but step one is demolition.  Here's a slideshow of our accomplishments in the first couple of weeks of ownership:

Wild Things

What have we been doing around here for the past 3 months?

Celebrating P's birthday of course...

Maybe we did a few other things in that time...Christmas, welcoming in 2013, buying a house (more on that coming soon)...but none more important than celebrating our little guy's first year.

A few belated pictures of the big day, complete with first chocolate cake.  The orange sign may not be legible in the photo, but it was a handmade gift for P by his brothers. I swear Mom was not involved. It reads:

THIS IS THE BIRTHDAY BOY.  HE IS NOT ANY OF THE WILD THINGS.

Give him another year, boys.  Give him another year.