Faster than I thought

After devoting 2 of my entire weekends to sanding the stairs I think we are almost done. We are offically done with the 40 grit sandpaper on the steps and just have a little bit of 60 grit left to do on the trim. In the middle of sanding this weekend my Ryobi sander died on me. I took it into Home Depot and they gave me a new one. Apparently my drive belt broke. I press a little hard on the sander to get more off in less time. I had to break the new one in for an hour or so to get it back up to my standards of sanding =)

Here is what the stairs look like now:


Top of stairs looking down:


Next we'll sand a medium grit, then fine, then very fine. The great thing about the other sand paper is that you're no longer trying to get rid of any imperfections so it goes pretty quick. In fact we might be able to get it all done this coming weekend.

Oh yeah... I'm soooo sick of dust!

Fun With Sanding...

So I'm sure you remember the long tedious process in which we recently sanded our massive Buffet. This weekend we just began another awful sanding project- the stairs. I have been dreading this for soooo long. The time has finally to just get them done and over with. This weekend I began working on the stairs and probably put a good 6 or 7 hours in of sanding. The worst part of sanding, besides vibrating hands, dried out sinuses and nausea, is the clean up. I have about 5 stairs left to go so I am almost done with the 40 coarse sand. After I am done with that I'll switch to medium, then fine, then very fine. I am hoping the have the stairs done within 2 more weekends of working on them. The worst part is using the course sand because you and sanding out all of the imperfections/ old stain and you spend about 1/2 hour or so on each step. The good news is that all of the other sand paper we use goes pretty quick!

So our plan is to sand the floors throughout the house with sanding machine before we stain and poly the stairs. Poly for stairs smells so awful that I would prefer to just knock out the entire house over the course of a weekend. Since you can't walk on it and all... Here are the photos of what the stairs use to look like- in case you forgot. I'll post updates tomorrow.


Not only do I have to sand these steps, but I also have to sand the landing and more steps to the right of that. *sigh

Workin it.

Last weekend we got quite a bit done on our front sun porch. We finished sanding the front door. We stained it pretty dark (ebony). We wanted it darker than our interior stain so that the front door really sticks out, on the exterior. We also sanded, and decided to just paint, the door frame and the window frame. It looks really good. All of the paint stripping really paid off. Although it was pretty tedious and time consuming. We still have alot of paint stripping to do around the windows and of course the bead board ceiling, which I will be staining- not painting. That should be a blast.

I didn't get a chance to take these until last night so they are a little dark. What do you think?


Otherwise we rehung pictures in the dining room and it made a huge difference. I got a really cool plant that fills some space in there too. Now I just need to get a center peice for the dining room table and some window treatments and blinds and we're all set.


I can't wait for Christmas. I can wait for the cold though.

New dining chairs

We didn't really have too much time for any projects this weekend. We went up to the cabin this weekend to take out the dock. All weekend I have been dreaming about these great dining room chairs that I saw last week. After going to check them out again we realized that the chairs I liked might be better accent chairs. The previous chairs we had were your basic Ikea chair- completely uncomfortable. We went to Odds and Ends and found these slingback chairs for $79/ chair- that's a steal. I'm not 109% sure of them- just like everything else that I paint or buy. I just really wish that I was 100% sure of them.



What do you guys think?




Here is the view where I think they just look really big- Almost like mad hatter chairs. Am I crazy? I might be obsessing a bit.

Deh-muh-li-shun

Here are the photos of the almost completely wood paneling free guest room. There is a lovely lavendar butterfly wallpaper that covers the walls. The other wall near the window has no sheet rock but is insulated which is good. I'm wondering if we should bother to reinsulate the walls?





Although it looks a little scary it feels so much bigger. I think the wood panleing was just a little bit scarier than this. Now people won't be so afraid to sleep in this room once we get a few minor things done.

I'm offically beat!

Last weekend we were very productive. Maybe too productive if there is such a thing. We started our weekend off by sanding the front door and starting to sand the trim around the windows (this is on the front sun porch). I started caulking around windows to prepare for this extremely cold winter that we are being told about (can't wait!). Then, on Sunday, we decided it was time to start gutting the guest bedroom. We are redoing the hard wood floors and I just really want the major demolition to be finished before so that we aren't dragging this stuff through the house.

So here are the only before photos I could find. These are from the day we got our keys to the place:


Don't you love those great built in dressers? Hahah. I think wood paneling was the cheap easy way for guys to 'refinish' a room back in the 70's.

here is another random:


All of the wood paneling and dropped ceiling along with tiles are now gone. I have to take some photos tonight when I get home and I'll post them tomorrow. The room looks soooo much better. Even gutted. Sad.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We also bought a new light for the office and changed out all of the ourlets so they are clean and white. Well now there is a short somewhere and half the lights are out upstairs. What a friggen mess. TG for my maintenance guy. He's going to stop by tonight.

A little excited.

We had a fun visit with some friends last night, who are also fellow house rehabbers/ bloggers. We had been planning on paying someone to sand and redo our hardwood floors. The upstairs hall and office alone was going to cost $825. A little pricey but it needed to be done. I've never really wanted to tackle a sanding project because I've always been warned I would sand too deep and could really mess up my hard wood. After speaking with them it sounds like this is actually a project that we are going to take on. Not only will we be sanding the office and hall... We will also be resanding the living room and dining room. How ambitious, right?

The only problem is that we won't be able to put the furniture on the floors for about 7 days after sanding, which isn't much of a problem. We'll just have to fins a place to stay for a week. This is going to be a big- FUN- project. I'm excited! The hand sanding of our stairs starts either this weekend or next weekend.