Never, Ever, EVER!

Those are the three words I've repeated numerous times over the past 24 hours in regards to what my thoughts are concerning painting over hardwood floors: never, ever, EVER do it!

As mentioned in my previous post, we started refinishing our floors this weekend. It is a VERY involved process. (Another thing to add to my "If only I'd known" list.) When you refinish hardwood floors, the first thing you have to do is sand them. So, we went to Home Depot and picked up the sanding drum machine, which is a big machine that slightly resembles a vacuum, and the edging machine, which you need to use along the edges, and which is an evil, evil invention dreamt up by someone who wished to inflict much harm and pain upon people.

We also had to pick up numerous sheets of sandpaper for each machine, because you don't just get to sand the floors once. You have to sand them first with a rough grain (24) of sandpaper, to get rid of all the gunk, paint, rough spots, etc. Then you sand them with a medium grain (60) to get rid of a lot of the splinters and snags. Finally, you sand them with the finest grain (100) to get them truly smooth. And that's just the sanding.

After sanding, you coat the floors with polyurethane (which makes it all nice and shiny and protected), let it dry for 24 hours, sand it down (by hand), add another coat, let it dry 24 hours, and then you can walk on it/move stuff in. So, even if you managed to finish all the sanding in one day, it's still at least a 3 day process, simply because of letting the polyurethane dry. Fun, huh?

Oh, and did I mention we're trying to finish this all and move in by this coming Saturday? As in, 5.5 days from now?

Originally, this was our hoped-for schedule:

Saturday, Dec 19: new house finished, moved into, rental house cleaned, moved out of
Sunday, Dec 20: go to church, drive up to NYC to see Josh's family/have an early Christmas/give his car to his sister
Monday, Dec 21: drive back to Philly in the afternoon, pack for trip to Seattle
Tuesday, Dec 22: leave on our early-morning flight to Seattle

I don't know if all of that will be able to happen anymore due to the time crunch (specifically the NY trip), but we're still hoping it will!


But, back to the floors. Saturday we rented the machine and spent 12 hours at the house, with about 10 of that actually going towards sanding. It took all that time to get the 2 rooms downstairs done... but they're done! That's a big accomplishment. The first round with the machines is definitely the hardest, because you're tearing up all the old gunk. I'd say the first round of sandpaper (24) took us about 2/3 of the time on Saturday, while the 60 and 100 grains combined only took about 1/3 of the total time. It's also pretty back-breaking work. I know we're saving a ton of money doing it ourselves... but man! If I'd known what this involved, I might've insisted on staying in our rental through January. We're just plain exhausted and sore all over.

After church on Sunday we got to work again, this time tackling one of the bedrooms upstairs... THE ONE THAT PEOPLE PAINTED OVER THE HARDWOOD FLOORS. Seriously, I don't understand why anyone would ever do that. You have beautiful hardwood floors! What are you doing painting them brown? And then red/brown? And then painting grey on top of that?!

I won't get into details, but let's just say that in that ONE ROOM, we used TWICE the amount of materials as we did for the downstairs (living and dining rooms), AND we spent 6 hours... doing just the FIRST SANDING! We haven't even gotten to the 60 and 100 grains!!!! Granted, they'll probably go much faster.... BUT SIX HOURS! ON ONE ROOM! AND WE'RE NOT EVEN DONE WITH IT!!!

Please, for my sake, and for Josh's sake, and for the sake of all that is good, NEVER, EVER, EVER PAINT OVER YOUR HARDWOOD FLOORS!!!

Josh is going over to the house again today to do more sanding... and one of our friends from church is going to be helping him. They're going to try and finish the first/longest grain for the rest of the upstairs, which includes the study (which has "regular" hardwood floors), the other bedroom (which has tar all over it because some people decided to put tiles on top of hardwood floor, which we had to rip up - ugh), and the hallway (which had some pieces replaced, so it's totally uneven). I'll be going over tonight as soon as I get back from work and switching places with Josh (since much ministry time takes place in the evenings), and we're hoping that maybe, somehow, I'll be able to finish the upstairs and we can return the machines tomorrow morning (when our 3rd day of rental is up) and put on the first layer of polyurethane.

Doesn't that just sound fantastic? And can anyone tell I'm slightly freaking out? :)

Anyway. Please. Just, please. Do me the favor and never, ever, EVER paint over hardwood floors!