Dust everywhere, but I can see the floor now

Yesterday was another hot and muggy day in Jacksonville. I bought an A/C window unit and installed it in the upstairs room that we will be moving everything in to. I looked around and saw my white bare walls with unfinished windows. It was just depressing how long it was taking to do one room, ONE FREAKIN ROOM!

So I decided to start sanding the floor. Now I know most people will either get a. a professional or b. do it themselves. I chose b especially with me shelling out $5000 to strip and paint my exterior, I had virtually nothing left. Now I wanted to do the sanding right without causing any(or much) damage to the wood. I had to choose to do it faster but more dangerously with a drum sander or take longer and more painful with a hand sander...... Of course I am in Florida and my brain is getting fried, so I took the longer more painful route. So I went to Home Depot and looked at sanders, I have a orbital palm sander at home, but I've tried that and that would take a millenium to do just one room. I needed something much faster and stronger. Drum roll for the belt sander please... So I looked at all the belt sanders that were available and I took the cheapest they had, bought the coursest grit they had and went home. I plugged that bad boy in and gave it a rev. Right when I put that monstrosity on the floor, I swear my arm almost popped out of its socket. I was not expecting the pull that this thing gave, and it was only 5.3 amps. I couldn't imagine what some of these more expensive belt sanders would do, it would probably leave toothpicks left after it eats up the wood.

But after a few pushes with the sander I could see the natural wood floor shining through. It must be the same thing people felt when they sifted their pans in the water to find minute pieces of gold. JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I sanded a whole corner side with that thing, still couldn't get in between some of the planks, but I guess I could use the hand sander for that. It was great to see and I hope that I can get it mostly sanded by this weekend. Maybe I'll get another one and have my wife help me out. But overall I am pleased with the results. I know I will be aching, but if it doesn't kill me, I guess I will just keep on trucking.

Rotten fascia, soffits or whatever they're called

Well today I decided to take a break from the master bedroom and went to Home Depot. While there I looked around and found a bottle of Minwax Wood Hardener. Now what would I need wood hardener for???

For these:


Here I am looking at the rotten soffits, fascia or whatever you call them.


Now the good thing is that not all of them are bad. The bad part is that the bad ones are mostly the ones on the second floor, which is way high. The problem with that is, I am scared of heights. Guess I will have to get over that, but that will be another day.

House colors? What a waste!

Well Lita and I couldn't make a decision to what colors to paint our house. Especially with the front of the house stripped, painting will come up sooner than later. So what did we choose? Red? Green? Yellow????? Hell if we knew, so we hired a paint color person (don't know what you call them). All he did was show us colors for the interior of our house, even though we specifically called him to advise us on our exterior color. After about 20 minutes of him blabbing about our interior colors, I told him that we really called him to give us ideas about our EXTERIOR. So he goes on and talks about the exterior and having the exterior stripped and all. That went about 30 minutes. He finally talked about colors and asked us what we wanted to color it???? Isn't that the reason we called him? What the FUDGE was he out there for? Basically he came out talked to us about things we didn't want to talk about, then when he started talking about colors he asks us what we wanted to color it??? Very confusing and wasted lots of money for it. What was that $90 for anyways??? Oh well, we sent him on his way with no real decision.

After a couple days we came down to 2 colors we liked, a light blue green color and a darker blue color. Here are some pictures of our newly stripped house (well as much as could have been stripped in one week). I will have to try to get pictures of the colors we are thinking about.

before after

My green house???

Well it has been 3 full days of paint removal from my exterior and to my surprise instead of the wood having a wood color and look, it is actually a dark green color?? From my understanding, the dark green is the original color of the house and I assume that it has stained the top part of my wood green. I'm sure if it were sanded it would be more of the wood color, but I'm not spazzing out just yet. I still got a long ways to go before the exterior is even close to done. But so far it is looking good and Enoc has started stripping the paint from the ceiling of the porch. I keep on telling myself that I will post pictures, and I will, so you can see what it looks like. Other than that it is just one more less day before we move into our new rubble.

So much money to spend, so little money we have

Well over the weekend we met Enoc, our next door neighbor, and his co-workers who are going to do the stripping, priming and painting of our exterior. Basically we just went over how the procedure was going to go and how much we would pay him and how. He seemed very reasonable and did a good stripping and priming job for the lady that lives next door to us.

So today while I was at work I got a call from Enoc. He had a problem with stripping, there was no outlet on the outside of my house??? Weird I never even noticed that before. So I had to drive to my house from work, which takes about 5 minutes, and I had to worm the extension cord into my window and into the outlet. But I'm happy to see that this is happening and that I will have a painted house in a few weeks. Now we need to decide on colors!!!! And how we're going to get money to pay him.

Also on Sunday I went to Bo's house, the lady that is selling her clawfoot tub, and we saw the tub. First of all her house was awesome, with a little cottage in the backyard. She had so many plants planted in her little garden, it was wonderful. But to my main point, the tub was great. It had some cleaning and rusting on the outside, but I'm sure a little cleaning and painting would do the jobs. Also the feet were so detailed, the tub was just beautiful. While we were there we also bought her sinks with vintage faucets on them, now all we need is a toilet and we are set! Actually what I need is a truck to take this big tub back home, but I will have to wait till I can get some more manpower.

New layout of my blog plus a new clawfoot tub(or I hope so)

I just edited my blog site last night, so now it looks a littel neater, I'm not totally done with it yet, but you can see how it is looking right now.

As for my other news, I might be getting a clawfoot tub today for $100! I went to my historic districts message board and saw a post, that a lady had wrote where she was selling her clawfoot tub, sinks and windows. So I jumped on the opportunity and called her up right away, she said she would sell it to me, but first I wanted to go see it. So it looks like after work I will be going over there and taking a look at the tub and anything else shes selling. Finally we might be getting a tub that won't cost in the thousands. I will take pictures of it when I can.

How I should refinish my floors

Well with about 1 month and 1 week left in our apartment, we are about 40% complete with the master bedroom. Which means we need to get the other 60% done in about 5 weeks. Holy crap on a stick!!!!!!! So I have decided to try and figure out a way to refinish my floors. Now I think my floors are heart of pine wood, I don't really know, but I assume so because I live in Florida and there are pine trees everywhere pluss a neighbor told me that. I have heard the pine is a softwood and might not be a good idea to use a drum sander on it, especially since I have not used a drum sander in my life. But paying someone to sand it isn't an option either, since I don't have that kind of money. So I am left with doing this myself and trying to make sure I do it right the first time.

Yesterday I took my orbital palm sander and took a few swipes at the floor and it started to sand off the stain or whatever was on there. But I could see that where 2 boards meet one side didn't get sanded and I would have to tilt the sander to try and sand that area. So in my brilliant observation I assume my floors aren't level, well the boards aren't at least. I don't think chemically stripping them is a good idea either, since I have gaps between my boards and I don't want anything sitting in there for a long time.

I've also read where people think you shouldn't use a drum sander because it makes the floors look brand new, I guess the idea is to make them look old without the old nasty black gunk on them. So is using the palm sander my best option? Has anyone refinished their pine floors and could give me advise?

Oh yeah, we haven't even painted the walls yet, but thats our next project, then sanding the floors.

Updated pictures

Update on the pictures of fishing.... Well I didn't get to fish much because I broke the fishing line at the first cast, so I decided to try to catch crabs. Everyone else was able to, but I got 0. Anyways heres some pictures of my trials and lots of errors and few pictures of our windows we did.

Fishing season!

Well today instead of working on the house me and the wife decided to go fishing with my vacationing relatives from New York. After having to work 9.5 hours on a Saturday, I decided to have a break and go fishing. I haven't fished since I was 12 so I hope I remember how to do it. Oh well, I will post pictures of anything (if anything) I catch....

On to the house, yesterday my wife went to the house to show some friends (since I was at work I wasn't there), but she called me to tell me that the carpet we pulled was sitting outside. The weird thing was that we didn't put any carpet outside! Could it be ghosts???? Nope, it was our next door neighbor Lee, he told her that the back door was open, and since we told him to help us with out house he decided to clean up some things. Kind of sounds weird so we now are locking the doors from now on. Good thing was, that it was Lee and not someone else

Siding

Well we talked to one of our neighbors yesterday about stripping and painting the exterior of our house. Half of our houses siding has actually been replaced with new wood from the previous owner. But we plan on stripping and painting the rest, even if it looks kind of weird. Well he quoted us for $5500 to do everything, but we haggled him down to $5000. I don't know if thats a great deal or not, but others have quoted us for $4000 just for stripping the remaining paint. But I can see why it would cost a lot, since there is a lot of detail on the half that needs stripping. Hopefully we can get our house painted soon, so that we won't be the only house not painted.

Backyard

Well today is another muggy day here in Jacksonville, Florida, but one good thing is that we have a clear backyard!. No grass of course, but a backyard with no weeds and no huge piece of concrete slab that the PO used as a parking spot. We paid our neighbor $150.00 to get rid of that nuissance and another $150 to make us some skirts for the outside of our house. He also cleaned up our yard. What a great worker! I will post pictures as soon as I can. As for the inside, Lita got sick of looking at the gross carpet so she ripped out all the carpet in 2 of the rooms. I tried to stop her, telling her that we could use the carpet as a floor sheathing for when we paint the walls, but she went crazy on the carpet and just pulled it all up. Guess I will have to buy some plastic sheets to put there when we start painting. But the floors did look nice, except for a few pieces that had gotten eaten by termites. Hopefully we can find some spare pieces in other peoples dumpsters or something.

For the master bedroom we have stripped all the windows and are now thinking about sanding them down and instead of painting the window trims we are highly thinking about staining them instead. I saw a house yesterday with stained windows and it looked great. Hopefully we can get the room finished soon so we can move everything in there.

We are still having troubles getting our home warranty getting our A/C fixed, it looks like we might have to purchase a new system. I hope they don't cost too much.....