sanding – The Hermits' Rest

It’s Sanding Day! Time to Play with Broken Glass

Today is a day I’ve been waiting for a long, long time. The Big Sander has arrived, and the floors in my office and the front reception area are getting sanded. That also means that today’s the day we get to to our fun* arts and crafts project of putting pieces of broken glass in the holes in the floor to turn them into features.

Here you can see the glass before sorting.

I took some time on my lunch break to go through our can of glass pieces that used to be wine bottles and separate the really big pieces from the smaller ones. I also had to get rid of ones that still had the labels attached, since they didn’t get taken off before the smashing.

I was very careful not to get tiny shards in my fingers, but eventually I had nice piles of big chunks and smaller ones, which are what’s going in the floor. I’ll share how it comes out!

The smaller pieces of glass are in the container. Some may still be too big.

Meanwhile, Chris and Randy are wrangling with the Big and Little Sanders. Even after the first pass, the floors looked better.

We think we will keep them the color they are, rather than staining them. It goes with our rustic theme, I think. Note that where you still see darker wood is where there are low spots in the floor. It is NOT even at all. After 115 years, it can be forgiven.

I was so excited about the sanding that I took a movie. It’s probably not going to be a box-office hit, but it’s interesting to see how Chris does it.

Sanding Suna’s office.

Other renovation happenings are that Randy took the wallpaper down on the other upstairs room, the one that used to have giant hounds-tooth plaid in it. Lo and behold, that room also has plain shiplap walls. The other two had plaster, so I’d love to know why two bedrooms got plaster and two did not. I guess they were wallpapered all along.

Shiplap room, with view of future conference room, with plaster walls, through the door.

It’s a big day over here at the Hermits’ Rest, so you’ll be hearing more from me. I find it really handy to write all these happenings up, so I can refer to them later.

*Chris has let me know that my definition of fun is anything that I get to enjoy watching him do. So whenever I say, “This will be fun!” I mean, “This will be fun to me to watch you do!” His point is well taken.

We Are Preppers

…for floor refinishing, that is.

The big day is coming: the Big Sander is getting rented tomorrow and the rest of the downstairs floors are getting finished.

Reception room clean. Doorway is sealed from dust leakage.

But, yes, it takes a lot of prepping to get rooms ready to sand. Both the reception area and my office are now empty and the floors clean as we can get them.

Chris had to carefully check for nails and other metal stuff, because we sure don’t want to break a rental sander.

Ladders are in my office to reach the air conditioner and seal it off tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Lee is slowly getting his office ready. He brought over his pretty gray rug that we’d been storing in the Hermit Haus conference room. He even put some of his things in his bookshelf. It’s good to see him excited.

Tomorrow should be interesting!

We are doing something special with all these cracks.

My office window is most attractively sealed off.

Can I Be More Tired?

Oh, Probably

But I can’t hardly feel my legs, and my stomach muscles are yelling at me. Plus, my head is all fuzzy. It’s both physical and mental. But, I kicked butt and took names today. At least until I got home from work.

I had a couple of pretty intense work meetings today, and I had to work up some courage to take up space, I guess, to not get put down and belittled. So I put on makeup, a nice shirt, and a power necklace, just to feel the part.

Everything went just fine, and I enjoyed myself, even. Immediately after that I ran across the street to sand away on the bathtub. I changed my outfit, as you can see above. Made me feel strong and powerful in a different way.

The rest of the day I was in so many meetings that my ears hurt. Luckily I was only in charge of a few. It does hurt my brain, but I like learning stuff at work, too.

I appreciated the sanding stand. I don’t know how Tubby got up there, though.

Back to sanding I went. Between me and Chris, and three sanding methods, it’s as good as it’s going to get. I got the tub exterior all clean, so it’s ready to paint.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement.

Chris went at the interior of the tub with the CLR and got almost all the stain off. One more attack should do it.

The stain is almost a dim memory for Tubby.

Speaking of Sanding

Of course, Chris got a lot more sanding in than I did. He did ALL the stairs.

Then he applied stain. Maybe it will be dry enough to seal tomorrow. Then he does the trim and they’ll be ready for rails. Wow!

I heard that the new, smaller tub legs are on their way, so maybe Tubby will get installed soon and the rest of the plumbing will go in!

We’re still debating what to do with the floors. Lee doesn’t want to sand them. I do. Chris is stuck in the middle. I think I’ll lose this one. Oh well. I’ll buy rugs!