Nesting With Power Tools

After building much anticipation, we are happy to show off the progress made over Labor Day on the house. On Tuesday of the previous week, Mr. Miller happily announced that, unless the dr apt that week changed plans, he would finish the floors in the house over the long weekend. At this point, it should be mentioned that our floors are tongue and groove pine in the majority of rooms (with tile in the entry, downstairs bath & sunroom and bamboo in the upstairs bath and office). When we built the house, the main floor was exposed to the elements prior to getting the roof - therefore the wood had darkened considerably and bore all of the marks of construction projects, the occasional dropping of a tool and/or Anne's near daily coffee-spilling experiences. Since the floors had not yet been sealed, any moisture on them that wasn't soaked up immediately had a habit of staying put...along with any stains. On an interesting sidenote, socks and/or shoes were also needed to prevent catching bare feet on the uneven (ie non-sanded) surfaces.

After this description, it is probably hard to believe that the pregnant lady of the house (whom was well into the nesting stage) had a bit of a conniption over the thought of moving all of the furniture, packing and/or covering anything hard to clean and residing in town for the weekend. She quickly responded to her loving spouse's commentary by reaching for the Mud Pie ice cream at roughly 8am that morning and calling several friends for moral support. It had not occurred to her that the father of the incoming child might also exhibit nesting behavior, granted, with a significant increase in tool and power use.

Late that Monday found us still happily married, with finished floors and a much brighter, more finished looking house. Eric should receive MAJOR kudos for managing to sand every floor with the rental from Ace, grind down the wood in a few uneven spots, vacuum all of the massive amounts of sawdust off the surface and then, painstakingly, apply a coat of wood sealer and 2 coats of polyurethane. It looks positively beautiful AND (after the stubborn woman of the house got her eyes off the horrifyingly dusty kitchen) made Mrs. Miller realize that sealed and level floors are much easier to clean and that "moving back" into the various rooms was actually somewhat fun.