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.