The two twin beds pushed together makes me giggle! But honestly, it was quite a chore to get the queen box spring up the steps, down the hall, and into this room!
I was able to step in and get some rolling done while she continued cutting the ceiling and trim. As usual, as soon as Micah needed me though, I had to abandon my task at hand. Naturally, Rachel carried on as usual in order to give us some progress on our house.
The floor had that same weird stain that the other two rooms had.
This was the last room to get sanded, which equals the sloppiest and roughest job. I feel like it took 3 years (and I wasn't even the one on my hands and knees working!), but it really only took a week to get all 3 rooms sanded down.
By the time I finished staining Micah's room, I needed a break. I was determined to complete the third room though before going to bed, so I convinced Jason to help me knock the room out before midnight. We each took a half of the room (and we'll never tell which part belongs to who), and we were able to finish the room before going to bed. Yes, we used the wrong method on this room as well as the other two rooms by never wiping up our stain.
This is how shiny it still looked the next morning and even into the following day. Like Micah's room, it wasn't necessarily the stain color that was still on the surface but rather some of the oil. I tried wiping it up as best as I could. I'm pretty sure this is the main reason why when we placed our...::cough, cough:: water-based polyurethane onto the floors, we got the distinctive oil and water look. Most of it dried fine, and almost all of the rest came out with some light sanding. This room continued to get rougher and rougher with each coat of polyurethane. We finished the last coat the day before we left for vacation with the anticipation that we could start moving furniture onto the floor upon our return from our trip.
I knew that we needed to touch up the baseboards where the sander had nicked the paint, where the stupid blue painters tape had pulled off parts of the paint and where we accidentally got some stain or polyurethane onto the trim. Of course, before you can paint, you have to clean the walls. They were still COVERED in saw dust. I started by brushing off the parts that had accumulated a significant pile of dust (windows and doors). Then I took a rag (my dad's old t-shirt) and wiped off the walls before taking a damp sponge over the walls to remove any excess residue. The amount of dust initially forced into the air caused me to take a break, which made this task take 2 full days before I could even start touching up the paint. Meanwhile, I realized that I never painted the quarter round, which should definitely be in place before we start moving furniture into the room. The list was adding up.
I got all of those tasks done, and while sliding around on my behind to pain and dust, I realized that our floor was unacceptably rough. I crossed my fingers and approached Jason with the idea that maybe we could try just one more coat of polyurethane after one more good sanding. He looked like he might cry. He knew it was worth a shot, but we both just wanted this room to be done. After some pouting, he agreed to try it one more time. We thought that maybe it would be faster to use the orbital sander with a very light grit paper. WRONG. It went straight down to the stain. Do not pass go. So he still used the orbital sand paper, but just attached to his hands. We had tried using the blocks, but those wear out so quickly and you spend the whole time brushing your knuckles against the floor. It didn't take nearly as long as he'd feared, and the room quickly swept up with a broom and a damp sponge.
The room looks the exact same in a picture as it did before, but it is significantly smoother now that we went through the process again. Now we're just waiting for his next day off or half-day to get him to re-install the quarter round, and the room will finally be DONE!
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