Thursday, September 27, 2007

Floor Refinishing 101

I just completed my first ever hardwood floor refinishing job.  It wasn't hard, but extraordinarily time consuming. 
 
When we had pulled up the carpeting in three of the bedrooms a few weeks back before moving in, we found that the floors had never been finished.  On top of that, they had paint smeared all over from when the rooms were painted at some point - obviously without a dropcloth.  I don't have any "before" pictures, but it was bad.
 
I rented a commercial floor sander two weeks ago and spent the entire weekend sanding down the floors in 3 rooms.  That was tiresome and I used every muscle in my body.  When I woke up on Monday morning, I could hardly stand up and walk.  It took about 3 to 4 hours total for each room, sanding in various grits and sweeping between each pass, until I was down to bare wood.  I had to get on my hands and knees to do the edge work with a hand sander and that was very time consuming, at least an hour or two for for each room.
 
I spent a considerable amount of time researching and deciding what product to use for the clear coat on top.  We decided we didn't want to stain the floor, but rather keep it in it's natural color.  I ended up using a water-based polyurethane on top of a base-coat sanding sealer.  The nice thing about this stuff was that it was fast drying and cleaned up with water.  I hoped that I could get the appearance out of it that we wanted, which was a high-gloss look.
 
I started Saturday, by sweeping everything (shelves, windows, baseboards, etc) and vacuuming, then, a damp mop over everything to catch any stray dust.  I put down the base coat, let it dry (about 2 hours), then got on my hands and knees to do a light, one-pass sanding according to the instructions.  From there, it was just time and patience layering the polyurethane one coat at a time.  I got the final coat down late on Monday night and it turned out great.  The photos can be found here http://picasaweb.google.com/Greg1992/FloorRefinishingProject.
 
The other hardwoods throughout the house looked great when we first moved in, but now they don't quite look as nice in comparison.  I'll be doing the rest of the upstairs at some point in the near future, once we get some other more immediate tasks out of the way.

 

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Times Like These

It has been nine days since I last posted, and it certainly has not been due to a lack of anything to report. We were getting down to crunch time and working furiously to prepare for the move-in.

Last week the focus shifted from home improvement to preparing for the delivery of our furniture and belongings. We also continued our quest for phone service. In case I hadn't mentioned it, we were supposed to have a working phone line on August 8 and Dottie has spent way more time than necessary to get Verizon to flick a switch to activate the existing service that has been at this house for 35 years and to assign a phone number to it.

Last Monday after work, I managed to get Madison's room completed (wow, what a color - Fussy Pink, and Fussy doesn't even begin to describe it). Tuesday evening, I got the guest room primed. At the end of Tuesday, it was clear that I wasn't even going to have the upstairs complete before "move-in", but that was okay, it just brought a heavy sigh. You all probably heard it back home it was so heavy.

Wednesday evening, we managed to rip out the carpeting in the playroom and the guest room and somehow between the two of us, Dottie and I managed to haul all three rooms of carpeting (the master had been lying in the hallway for the last week) down the stairs, out the front door, around to the side and into the garage where it will stay until I can slowly feed it out to the street on trash day over the next few weeks. Lower Macungie Township has a limit to the quantity of trash you can set out each week, and believe me, we have A LOT of stuff to get rid of - so much so that I may still end up renting a small truck and making a haul to the dump myself.

Anyway, with all the carpet out of the upstairs it looks (and smells) like a totally different place. It sounds different, too because it is empty, but that will change once we get our stuff in. I will take some photos this week and post them so everyone can see the transformation in progress.

And finally...Move-In Day.

The movers showed up on Thursday morning - 8am on the nose. We had a team of 4, unlike the smaller team of 3 that packed us up. The lead guy was a challenge right off the bat because he talked so much and so fast that you couldn't get a word in edgewise. To make matters worse he had the most annoying southern redneck drawl I think I have ever heard.

After a quick tour of the house and putting protectors all over the floors, corners and door jambs, they were off in a fury of activity. Dottie stood at the island in the kitchen with the task of checking off items on the inventory sheet as they came in the door (they put a numbered sticker on everything when it is packed and it is inventoried on a sheet that is part of the documents they provide when the movers pack, load and drive off from the source location. Once at the destination, it all comes off and is checked against the inventory list created at the source). I was the "director" and was tasked with pointing the guys where to put things as it came in. This is necessary because things don't always go in the same place as the old house due to differences in rooms and purposes.

We were moving along quite well, conversing with the guys as they did their jobs and they were all good-natured and joking around with each other. About an hour or so in, I had just gone around back to put the patio umbrella into the table. I look up and the lead guy has just come out of the house, walks up to me and gets about a foot from my face and informs that "we" have a problem. Puzzled and taken a bit off guard as I don't know what he is about to tell me (we just dropped your piano, your couch is crushed, etc). He says that he has a guy that is ready to walk off the job. I ask why that would be and he goes on to inform me that it is because I am "on his back and riding him". I wish I'd had a picture of my face because dumbfounded is not even close to being accurate. I said, "what the hell are you talking about?" and he couldn't really construct a clear statement on to what the problem might have been, but apparently it had something to do with the fact that I was "on him" about "all the damages to our stuff", and he went on with his monologue that these guys have no responsibility for any damages that already exist and that they are just the movers. At this point I begin to get a little irritated (okay, a lot irritated) because the guy is in my face, rambling on and on and won't shut up. I raise my voice and let him know in no uncertain terms that I don't like him in face and for the third time, I have no idea what on earth he is talking about. He storms off and I am standing there just stunned. There had been a handful of insignificant things that were scratched or dinged or something and when it was noticed I would say something like, "oh, there is some damage on that piece, I'll note it on the sheet" (they give you a sheet to document damages). None of my comments were malicious, or even with any sort of "tone" other than informational because this is what I was instructed to do by the moving coordinator - mention the damage and make note.
The more I stood there and thought about this, the madder I got. I mean, it isn't like this was stressful enough without having to deal with crap like this.

My temper boiled over the top and I proceeded to make a bee-line for the truck - right through the house, across the yard up the ramp and into the truck. They guys were all standing there taking a break and talking about something related to what had just transpired. I said in a very irritated and confrontational voice, "so tell me guys, just what sort of problem do we all have here?" They looked at me almost as stunned as I probably looked when the lead guy blindsided me with this revelation. They all started babbling, talking over one another and I couldn't make sense out of any of it. The lead guy starts in again, and finally I raised my voice just under what would be shouting and said, "enough!". I told them that if they took offense to me simply stating that something was damaged then they were all a bunch of cry babies. I continued my own monologue and don't recall everything I said, but I am pretty sure that my feelings and opinions were quite clear. One of they guys, a larger fellow with big arms and tatoos provided a more clear explanation of what the issue was and it turns out that he had been making comments that he was getting tired of hearing people complain about damages that his company was responsible for. When our stuff got moved, it was put into storage which means that it was unloaded off the truck into a warehouse - piece by piece, box by box - just like it was loaded. Then it was re-loaded to be delivered. His point was that he wasn't wasn't upset with us, he was upset with the fact that they looked bad. He went on to say that they lead guy misconstrued the facts and took it upon himself to go out and tell me a thing or two about it. I was told by the lead guy that all I needed to do was to note damages on the paperwork and that there was no need to be telling all these guys about it because they didn't "need" to hear it (my guess is didn't want to hear it). I said "whatever" and walked off the truck.

Things were a bit quiet for a while and each one of the guys apologized and said the lead guy was kind of a nutty old guy and didn't know what he was talking about and that they lived with this sort of stuff every day (poor guys). The bigger comes up and he apologizes and says that his DAD isn't always a very good listener and takes matters into his own hands. We get all that stuff out of the way and proceed on with getting our stuff off the truck and quietly noting any damages.

They got it all unloaded by 4 PM and they wanted to know how we wanted the furniture set up and what boxes we wanted unpacked. I simply said to them that they could go and we would finish. There seemed to be some confusion about what I had just said based on the puzzled look on their faces. I restated that I wanted them to leave. Truth be told, I had had enough of them and the less time they were in my presence, the more quickly I could return to being a happy camper.

We set about doing the most important things first: getting clothing organized, bathrooms unpacked and beds setup and made up. That is about all we got done by 11pm when we all pretty much passed out on the bed.

Friday, we spent the entire day unpacking boxes. I don't know where all the stuff came from and it certainly didn't seem like we had that much in the old house, but it is clear that for 3 people we have way too much stuff. I focused on getting the office put together and getting Madison's toys all moved up into her playroom so she could unpack them. She kept busy the whole day reacquainting herself to her long lost toy collection. I am still amazed at how well she was able to occupy and entertain herself over the last two weeks. She has quite the imagination and is now starting to have imaginary friends and an imaginary daughter named Sally. Oh the stories she tells...

Saturday I spent a good part of the day moving things around in the basement and separating the mess that the movers made. I forgot to mention that during the unloading of the truck, I ran out to get a connection kit for the refrigerator. The relo company provided disconnect and reconnect services, but I hadn't heard from them on this end and I didn't want to wait, so I decided to do it myself. While I was away, the organized unloading of the truck that had been occurring ceased when I left. They pretty much just put stuff wherever there was a spot and a whole bunch of stuff got put in the basement that shouldn't have been. Additionally, they had mixed it all up and we had to sort through all the boxes to separate the stuff we wanted stored and left in boxes, the stuff we wanted unpacked and the stuff we needed to go upstairs.

It was when we opened a few boxes that we got a real treat. We had a bunch (and I mean many) boxes in the old house that were things that we boxed up to store. We also had stuff not boxed that was separated - baby clothes, electronic accessories and cables, and lots of books and games. It all got packed in whatever and wherever it would fit in a box. They even "unpacked" and "repacked" stuff we already had boxed. It was fun having to touch everything. At the end of the day, it was all sorted, all stored and organized on shelves in the "storage room" of the basement. Scratch that off the list...

Sunday, we decided we needed a break so we just got in the car and ran around all day. We had a few purchases to make and we decided to make a day of it. Everybody go something...Dottie and I got a much needed new mattress set for the new master bedroom furniture, Dottie got new gym shoes, I got new running shoes, Madison got a new doll from a really cool retro-toy store in Bethlehem, and we bought beer and soda to fill up our new "2nd fridge" in the basement. While in Bethlehem, we stopped at the Bethlehem Brew Works and had a couple of good beers before heading home for dinner.

Monday, I got out the mower and cut the lawn for the first time. It took much longer than I had expected. The property is about the same size as the old house, only with slightly different dimensions. It took me over an hour to cut it, but there was no trimming needed. There are 11 mulch beds in the yard and most of them are quite large, so it minimizes the grass to be cut. It does take more time to navigate all of them. I also took the time to sit down and sort out the TV and entertainment system setup in the family room. I hooked up the TV and DVD and when I turned on the TV, I had a picture that was shaped like an hourglass. The movers somewhere, somehow managed to break my TV. I have to file a claim form for all damages and supposedly they take care of any and all damages. I haven't read the "fine print" anywhere, so I am sure there are a few catches here and there. I think there is going to be a 42" plasma in our immediate future compliments of Paxton Moving Systems. They also managed to break both of our halogen floor lamps and one of my workbench base cabinets. I have a list of damages to both properties. The paperwork and follow-up is unending.

Today (Tuesday), the cable guys came back to hook us up with cable. When I setup the appointment, the options given to me were time slots from 11-2 or 2-5 and I opted for the latter. Of course, they show up at 1pm and nobody is home and they want to make it my problem. Dottie rolls in just as they are about to leave and they spend the next 5 hours connecting 2 boxes to 2 TVs with one piece of coax cable. I have no idea why that is. It would be like someone taking 2 hours to lace two shoes. Anyway, I get home and they have installed the wrong decoder boxes. We are supposed to have the newer, nicer digital boxes and we have the old analog ones that have only a coax connector and a single RCA connector. We have had enough incompetence and frustration with services to last at least through the end of 2008.

I went on my first ride today in over three weeks. It felt both good and and not so good. My last ride was on Saturday, August 11 - nearly a month. In and of itself, that doesn't sound so bad, but added to that is the fact that I had fallen off my program around the beginning of July. Before I had started commuting bi-weekly out here to perform my new job, I had been on a training program through Carmichael Training Systems (Lance Armstrong's coach) since October of last year. This was something I did to help me get back into competition and specifically it was to help structure my time so I could train as efficiently as possible. The program I was on had me riding 6 days per week with specific workouts each day. I knew I wouldn't be able to sustain that through all the travel and relocation, but I did my best. I came down sick with a nasty ear and sinus infection near the end of May that last well into late June/early July with took me out for a couple of weeks completely. When I was ready to begin again, we had all the troubles buying a house, which in turn took a huge amount of time (times 3 - 3 homes). From the beginning of July I was down to riding 3 or 4 days per week and by the beginning of August it was 2 or 3 and it all ceased the weekend before the move - nearly 4 weeks ago.

I went out after work for an hour, basically getting myself lost and finding my way back. According to my heart rate monitor, I covered almost 1000 feet of elevation in a 16 mile ride - and that was riding around the valley. I know that once I venture out for longer rides and up and over some of the mountains I will see 4k and 5k of climbing over a 2 to 3 hour ride.

I am going to try to get into my routine again. I'd like to race at the velodrome here next summer, so I need to get started now on a program. Shoot, I have plenty of time, it's not like I have anything else to do.

More to come...