What a LONG day – we’re just now sitting down after a 14 hour day (of course we had breaks for lunch and dinner but not long)! And the progress we made shows what a day we had.
First up – the gym floor!!! Dad spent the morning sanding it down and we did a bonus section of the hallway outside the gym (leading into the kitchen). By lunch it was ready to coat (so we headed to home depot to get some stained poly).
First pass with the belt sander
I helped with the vacuuming between sanding passes
This is the bonus section we decided to do, first we had to take up the linoleum in layers
Scraping up the felt stuff from the edges so dad can run the edge sander
Final time around the gym edge
A look at what the oak would look like with a clear coat (using mineral spirits)
At this point we broke for lunch and for a trip to pick up some poly and a paint brush. Before I show the finished floors I’ll show what Ryan did this morning.
While dad worked on the gym (with some help from me), Ryan got an early start putting up the window trim in the tv room…
Just getting started.
First window finished
Finishing up the second just in time for a lunch break (and a home depot run)
And the windows are trimmed out!
And back from lunch, we decided to try mixing a tinted poly (minwax) with a clear poly (to thin it out a bit). We didn’t like the oak with a clear coat and wanted a darker floor. Here’s our new gym floor!
look at that color!
And 20 minutes later (or thereabout) the floor is finished! (Well coat #1 anyway)
While Dad did the poly, Ryan and I installed the outside lights finally.
Before...
And the lights are up!
Check out those front lights, now if only they had some electricity...
So while at lunch we decided we needed to plan another project for the afternoon since the floors only needed another 20 minutes. We decided to work on the upstairs closet, not realizing what we were in for!
Hours later, we basically just got some wiring done – and undone. First Ryan took out the baseboards and then I took out the insulation from the ceiling (that was a messy job!). Then we took a look at the mess of wiring and tried to figure how much we could remove and leave the rest of the non-closet lights working.
Finally, we re-routed the original wires so all the upstairs lights still worked. We also put in a closet light with a switch.
Closet light!
Then we dealt with having no electricity downstairs (in the front hall and livingroom). We decided to actually wire the front hall off the planned feed that was run. The livingroom which was tied to the hall light is temporarily staying on there but now the switches in the front hall all work!
Outside fan, porch lights and hallway light 3-way all wired!
New coat closet light wired up
The only lights we don’t have hooked up yet is the upstairs hallway light and sconce lighting on the stairs because we need to run some wires upstairs in a new run. Just doing what we did took hours. So no real closet progress was made but the electrical is in good shape!
That was a very long day. Tomorrow the second coat will go on the gym floor! Time to rest up!