We did it!

We finished the floor, with a couple of hours to spare!  I left off actually laying the floor.  Our goal for getting the floor laid was Tuesday night, followed by the renting, sanding, and staining of the hardwood floors on Wednesday night.

To achieve this goal we had to do some crazy hours and have been left exhausted!!!  We filled the woods natural gaps, then off to Home Depot to rent a sander. 

We didn't know how to use the sander, so the guys at Home Depot gave us a 5 second demonstration.  As it turns out, Pierre took full control of the sander and I was quality control!

The sandering was to even the new hardwood with the old and create a smooth surface for staining.  The big sander worked fine, but we still needed the small hand sander to finese the smaller and more intricate areas.

Once the floor was sanded we had to stain the natural oak so that the old and new woods would blend nicey together.

This is when it truely got insane!  We were ready for the polyurathane.  3 coats.  I made yet another trip to Home Depot to see if I could find a poly that had a more yellow hint to match the already oxidized floor, but to no avail.  So we had no option but to use what was available and realize that it was going to take some time for the blend to become uniform.  I'm guessing a year or so ... but that's just a guess!

Now we had 6 hours to apply between each coat.  If we were any shorter, the varnish wouldn't cure, and if we took any longer, we would need to sand ... so in order to expedite the process and drop our workload - we sanded at 8.30 pm Thursday night.  That was the first coat.  It doesn't take much math to add 6 hours, and realize that we were in for a 2.30 am wake up call!!!  Yip, 2.30 am.  We timed the application and knew that it was going to take about an hour for the application, but there you have it, the second coat was on!

Yes folks, that AM on the upper left side!

So now we had the final coat scheduled for 9.30 am.  Back for some much needed shuteye!!!  9.30 came and the final coat was applied.  Poor Molly wasn't released from the TV room until the 3rd coat was fairly dry.  Then at about 4 pm, we hoped in the car and started on our journey to New Jersey for the week-end!  We'll be back to a dry floor tomorrow, ready to fix the plumbing with the new placement of the pipe holes, and the oven/stove so that we have SOME ability to cook and wash for the following week ...

So, we did it!  We are both exhausted, but we did it!

That being said, we have a l-o-n-g way to go!