As a work in progress

I can't help but share all the "working" pictures of the house because it really was a lot of work and I wanna make sure those that offered their assistance get their moment in the sun so to speak :) This was some night...we had to sand off the old finish/linseed oil on the floor which turned out to be quite a bit larger undertaking than we were ready for. Lets just put it this way: The Lores babysat all day long then after Daniel was at home he babysat and put corban to bed for me (yes, he is the BEST uncle in the entire universe) while my Dad, Mom, Jack, and I were doing various sanding and such. until 4 AM sunday morning. All this following a whole day of unloading the storage unit (when jack tweeked his back pretty badly) and moving all of that stuff from the storage unit into the house then starting the sanding around 2:30 PM.

The huge rental sanders that we had to use were crazy. Because they had used linseed oil to finish the floors, the sandpaper would get these discusting deposits from the oil getting heated by the sander then forming these indestructable balls on the bottom of the sandpaper rendering it unuseable. After burning through about 10 sheets of $8.99/sheet sandpaper and not even finishing one room-we headed back to home depot on 2100 south to figure out a solution. (the folks at the centerville home depot were somewhat...less than helpful the first time) After a very wonderful person behind the paint counter knew what he was talking about and took us under his wing to help us figure out a solution we were on our way again with: Laquer thinner (which emits deadly chemicals and toxins when using it *thumbs up*) Rubber Gloves (that slowly get eaten by the laquer thinner so that it's not slowly eating your hands *another thumbs up*), Boxes and Boxes of Rags (to apply the laquer thinner and the varnish in case we ever made it to that step) More sandpaper, A new kind of floor sander, and some candy bars for my belly. By the time we had grabbed a bite and were ready to get started sanding again it was around 9 PM. Luckily Jack and my Dad sacrificed themselves to apply the laquer thinner to all the floors so that my mom and I didn't have to breathe the fumes. Then we had to wait a good 30 min for that to disolve the linseed oil before we could start sanding again. Luckily we're close to Rocky Mountain Raceway so we could see and hear parts of the goingings on there that night-just rubbing in the fact that we had tickets to go that night and were stuck inhaling deadly chemicals without the joy of seeing drag racing or the fireworks. Anyway after we started sanding again it went very very well. We'd get a room done with sanding-then vaccum it really well then get to sand it again with a smaller grit sand paper-then vaccum it really well again-then get to sand it agian with a smaller grit sandpaper-(see a pattern??)then vaccum it one more time really well.

So maybe that explains the look in this pic... he he.

Eventually all the rooms were done being sanded with the box sander like 3-4 times, and all the edges done by hand with hand sanders , and we were able to go home and get a little shut eye.

Behold the naked wood flooring!!!

so if you ever consider doing your own hard wood-we are now certifiably experts. I think. just know that all in all it was SOOO worth it because every morning when we get up and get to walk on our floors we know that we broke our own backs (as well as my parent's) to make them this beautiful, and we saved about $2,000.