Category: Blog

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(Aunt) Poly for the Finish

Fun side note: We finished up Peaky Blinders a week or so ago and like it a lot. Aunt Polly was one of my favorite characters, but not Brandon’s. This was also the second time we tried watching it. The first time we watched about 15 minutes and both said we couldn’t understand a word they were saying and stopped. Now, we are older and watch everything with subtitles so that wasn’t an issue. Turns out, it’s a great show.

Now, back to the floors. So once I was offered my new position and had a start date of early September, it kick started the need to finish the the upstairs’ floor. The ill-timed first bout of COVID that hit all of us but Natalie gave us an unexpected week off work, so we packed up on Wednesday and worked the next four days to get the floors stained.

The first things we had to do was do our best to eliminate all the dust. We went over the floors again with a broom, wiped down the walls and trim where a lot of plaster and sanding dust landed, and then wiped down the floors again with mineral spirits and tack cloth. It was amazing how much residue that combo cleaned up from the floors. Turns out there are a lot of uses for mineral spirits and if Bob Villa tells you to use it, it must be okay. 🙂

All cleaned up and ready for the next step.

Then it was time to stain. We went with Gunstock for upstairs. We started in the green room and I had a moment of panic when he started in the closet. It looked so much darker than our test patch in Morgan’s room.

See?! DARK!!! At this point I was wondering if we were going to have to sand it off and start again.

But I was patient and it turned out beautiful. It is darker than the test patch but it looks really rich and warm. When we started I was doing the edging and Brandon the main part of the floors, but we switched after a bit and stuck with me on the main part and Brandon the edges. Turns out, I have a good touch with the blending.

We had to pick some points for seams. So we taped it off and then once it was dry the other side was taped to not double up on the stain. I’m not sure if anyone else will be able to find them, but if you look closely enough, I’m sure you could.
Looking pretty! And not so dark!

So once the stain was on it had to dry at least 24 hours before we could start putting the polyurethane on it. And that was because we couldn’t walk on it before then. Brandon headed home before the girls and I, so I was able to check on it Sunday afternoon. It was still a bit tacky in spots which concerned Brandon when I reported it. He wanted me to wipe off the tacky spots so I started to do that, but quickly stopped. I felt like I was going to leave footprints and do more harm than good

And speaking of footprints, we were very careful to keep Clarence off the floors while we were staining, but Saturday night I had that instinct and asked if anyone had seen him. Nope, and I noticed the upstairs door was cracked. So I went up to investigate and there he was, looking at me through the banister. Luckily, he came right to me and I was able to smooth out the little paw prints he had made. He hadn’t had much time to explore, so I could reach all of them from the stairs. He is stealth-like, which is why he is such a good hunter.

So the next weekend we had a super busy Friday/Saturday, but Sunday was free, so we packed up late on Saturday night and were able to start covering the floors with poly by 8am Sunday morning. The first coat took us 1 hour and 45 minutes, but by the last coat, I had it done in 40 minutes. Each coat needed two hours to dry. We realized we didn’t have to be super careful about brush strokes like the stain. We finished up the 4th coat around 7:30 and jumped in the car to get back to Macomb since we both worked the next day.

I didn’t get a good picture of us putting the poly on, but it basically looked like we were pouring Elmer’s glue all over the floor and smoothing it out.
All shiny and pretty!

So the poly was able to dry a full week before we started moving in the next weekend. Now, the main floors. Then we can get the rest of our house moved. YAY!

Hennepin Canal

This is one of our favorite places to explore. The trail is well maintained and it’s only a couple of miles from our house. Once Natalie is a full fledged bike rider, we will go on longer bike rides. If you want to read about the history of the canal, visit this site.

A stamp under one of the old bridges along the trail.
Some of the locks have picnic areas. There are also a few with camping areas. The girls and Brandon may do that, but I’ll hang out at home. I like the hiking and being outside, but dislike camping. And something else you can’t see in this photo are the mosquitoes eating up my feet. It took them a while to show up, but they did. Once we got to walking, it was okay.
Before I started work, Natalie and I would drop Morgan off at school and then head to the canal to walk and throw rocks/walnuts in the water. I showed her how the light walnuts floated so she could watch them go over the waterfalls/locks.
The girls call the locks “waterfalls”. They were flowing pretty good despite a pretty dry summer.
This bridge is just cool. And you can drive over it which I was skeptical of since pretty much all the other bridges have rotted away. But I watched another car go over, so I was reassured.
These are the typical foot bridges across the locks. I was surprised Natalie went across like it was no big deal. It’s loud and normally that makes her resistant but not this time.
I needed to be higher to capture this better but at this point in the canal it actually goes OVER Bureau Creek. The engineering is impressive when you think about how long it’s been around.
This is looking the opposite direction from the previous picture. You can see the creek down below.

We don’t typically see too many people when we are there. Holiday weekends are busier but still not crowded at all. It’s just a great place to take in some nature and explore.

Weekend Wrapup

We kicked off the weekend with a night at the Bureau County Fair. The girls were pumped to ride some rides and get cotton candy. I have never seen the appeal of cotton candy, but it’s their fair food of choice. Brandon likes corn dogs, and I personally go for the elephant ears. After moving to Macomb, I realized those are regional because I couldn’t find them at any carnival in that area. If I had been thinking, I would have started an Elephant Ear food truck because who doesn’t like fried dough with cinnamon sugar and a glaze of icing?!

It had been way too long. One of my favorite memories from the fair is going to the Queen contest as a kid with my parents and getting an elephant ear on the way out of the fairgrounds.

The girls rode rides until 10pm and there were still tears when it was time to go. Natalie had one meltdown when we stopped ever so briefly for French fries. It was unavoidable because she would have melted down later from lack of food. Morgan met up with a friend from her class to ride a few rides. I was happy to see that because she has bouts of homesickness missing her friends in Macomb. All in all it was a great night and they got our money’s worth of the armbands.

They rode this Dragon “roller coaster” at least a dozen times. Natalie is a dare devil with rides. She was incredibly bummed to not be tall enough for the big ship that swings way up and down.
Morgan still enjoys the younger rides but is starting to prefer the bigger rides. She gets motion sickness in the car (and bumpy plane rides) but the rides are okay for now. She wears bands on her wrists and goes for it. The last ride she went on was the Tilt a Whirl and I was holding my breath she didn’t hurl all over her new friend.
And this is what happens on a Saturday afternoon after a late night at the fair.

The rest of Saturday was spent on cleaning out the basement. While Brandon worked out clearing out some stuff, Morgan and I worked on ridding the basement of cobwebs.

It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of spiders. Morgan’s not a big fan but she stuck with this project.
This is the area Brandon was concentrating on so he could have a place for all the tools that were in the dining room. We needed to get those cleared out so we could start on the floors. See that big blue tank on the floor? He tried to attached that to my car and pull it up the stairs. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. 🙂 We will need to enlist my dad and his tractor to help out with that and all the other HUGE things that need to get out.
All the tools in the basement! The girls liked helping out with this project. Natalie sat at the top of the stairs and handed Brandon the tools Morgan brought her. I just had to help out with the heavier stuff. One step closer to refinishing the floors.

On Sunday we headed to the fair to watch Blake and Lauren show their pigs. They did a great job and the girls had a good time with their cousins.

I grew up showing pigs and have attempted to explain the whole thing to non-farming people, but I think it still comes across as a little odd.
The girls even talked us into one more ride. Lauren was nice enough to ride with them. Natalie loved the Tilt a Whirl on Friday night, but was less impressed on Sunday. She must have been on a rider’s high on Friday.

One more week off for me before I start the new job. I still have a few things I want to get done this week, so I’m going to do my best to be productive.

Moving: Part 1 of ???

We were able to move the girls’ clothes, some toys, dressers, Morgan’s mattress and box spring, and Natalie’s bed along with a few other things up to the new place last Sunday.

I think it took about an hour to get things loaded in my dad’s truck and then add the other mattress.

It went pretty smoothly except we forgot the mattress to Natalie’s bed until we had the other mattress and box spring already strapped down on my car. It was a relatively easy add though those things kept me from going my usual speed. 😉

Unloading was pretty easy too. The hardest part was reassembling Morgan’s old/Natalie’s new bed. It’s the IKEA Hemnes Daybed which is great for the storage. Brandon assembled it the first time and was surprised it went smoothly after hearing the horror stories of IKEA instructions. This time, we were tired and ready to be done so it took a bit longer than it probably should have. I was in charge of the instructions and didn’t know there were no words in IKEA instructions. It took me a hot minute to figure out the instructions, but I managed and the bed hasn’t collapsed yet.

She’s done better than I thought she would sleeping in a new bed in a new room at a new house upstairs away from mom and dad.

Brandon headed back to Macomb for three more weeks of work, but he will be back for long weekends. He will bring a few things along with him each time, but the majority of the rest of things will be moved once the floors downstairs get done.

The girls and I wanted to squeeze in some fun before school started on Wednesday. We checked out some local parks and the Hennepin Canal trail. I love to ride bikes and walk the trail. The girls like the “waterfalls” and throwing walnuts and rocks into the water.

I feel like this is one of the last ones you can actually drive over. Brandon and I took a wedding photo on one of the old bridges a few locks down and it had not been open to cars for years.

Morgan started school on Wednesday. Natalie will start a bit later because the program needed more documentation to start her in the program. Morgan was a bit nervous but I was sure she would have a great first day. She is so outgoing and makes friends everywhere she goes. She did love her first day and every day since, so that does make moving easier for her.

Ready to go at her new desk.

Natalie is very excited to start her preschool, mainly because there is a bunny in her room. Natalie’s comment was “it’s too big to for Clarence to kill.” I’m hoping she will start in the next few days since she asks every day to go to preschool.

So we will keep on getting things settled here and working on little projects. I’ll keep you up-to-date on those as they happen. We are trying to mix in some fun along with work since we are more “moved” now than we have been.

All the trimming

One of the extra projects we didn’t really plan on doing originally was refinish all the trim in the downstairs. But while we were fixing the cracks and prepping to paint it was easy to see that the trim had not been protected the last time everything had been painted. (Neither had the baseboards, but it’s not as noticeable except in the dining room where we painted navy and the sloppy paint is a light color. We did a good job taping, I swear.)

So all the trim came down, was labeled and then refinished. To refinish it, Brandon used a Citrus stripper because it’s not as toxic. We could be around it with out worrying about breathing it in or getting it on ourselves too much. It says it works in like 2 hours, but Brandon left it on and wrapped it in plastic wrap for 24 hours. Two hours was not even close to having it stripped.

After it sat for 24 hours, we were able to wipe them off and then sand them down. Everyone got involved in that process.

This was a great project for the girls to help with.

You can see Morgan using the small wire brush. Those worked great to get in the crevices of the trim. Then for sanding these sanding blocks were helpful.

Then, much to Brandon’s relief, he tried just putting poly on the trim and it looked great. That meant no staining! It was pretty amazing how just the coat of polyurethane brought out the natural coloring of the wood. We think it’s red oak trim so maybe that’s why it looked so good.

See how pretty?! No staining, just poly (satin finish)

I did not take a great before picture of them, but trust me, they were splotched all over with paint. Once they were dry it was a matter of nailing them back up and we didn’t have any issues with that since we labeled and kind of kept them bundled by room throughout the process.

Much cleaner and not paint all over them.

I do need to touch up the painting in the rooms, but I’m hoping once we get furniture in the rooms, the baseboards and door frames with paint won’t be quite as noticeable. This was an easy project that made a big difference in my opinion but I was also up on the ladders with all those paint spots in my face. 🙂

Door #1 or Door #2?

In what I feel like is typical farmhouse fashion, there are multiple doors going outside. The “front” door that goes to the porch would never be used as the main door because there’s no parking near it or a sidewalk/path leading up to it. The west door is easier access to the shed and may be where we end up parking our cars, but the south door will be our main entrance for guests. (And let’s not forget about the outside basement door which allows you to head to the basement or into the kitchen. There are a lot of doors.)

The South door has a tiny porch that then leads to two doors. Now, for all the years I have entered this house, there was a chair in front of the door that is straight ahead and entered the house through the one to the left.

We (aka Brandon) might also build a slightly larger landing/deck outside this door sometime in the future. That’s one of those things we will live with for awhile and see if it really needs changed.
They both look pretty original to the house, so I still can’t figure out why there are two doors.

It was always a narrow walkway with the upright freezer, plus my grandparents had the house phone on the wall to the right so they had a small table with phone books, etc. below the phone. It’s was always a cluster at holiday/birthdays to zig zag your way to the left, then right and squeeze past the phone area.

This is the view from the kitchen. You can see the phone hookup at the top left, so imagine a small table sticking out into that already narrow hall, especially with the door frame there. So yes, there was another door at some point that separated the kitchen from that small area. Another porch/entry way?

I had always assumed the door that went straight into the house was stuck and couldn’t open. But then when we had my grandma’s 90th birthday open house my parents opened that door so people could walk right in the house. My mind was blown.

One of Brandon’s first comments about the house was “we have to do something about the entry”. I went back and forth with some ideas, one of which was opening the doorway to the kitchen so I didn’t fix a crack on that wall. I’m annoyed with myself with that decision now, but I tell myself it’s just part of the character of the house and shows the difference of a fixed/unfixed crack in the plaster.

This is the view from the dining room. See the crack on the wall on the right? Might be a good place for a mirror or picture. 😉

The game plan now is to wall off the old pathway to make an entry way closet for people to put their coats and purses and have some storage for our off season coats. I would prefer to remove the door that is on the porch to leave it open and not confuse people about which door they should choose. That wall area will also allow for an extra cabinet and a little more counter space in the kitchen, which is needed. We are using the door to go straight into the house and it’s been a hard habit for me to break after 40+ years. I immediately want to veer to the left.

Obviously the strapped freezer and little cabinet will get cleared out, so it will be a good-sized space for coats, purses and extra storage. It might be my place to add a board and batten wall which is a common feature in craftsman homes. It’s also easy and cheap to accomplish, so that’s a win.

So that’s the plan, but when that plan gets executed, who knows? It may be next month or next year. It’s on the list but it’s not a super high priority. It also sounds like one of the easier “big” projects, so we may be able to slip it in relatively soon. Floors are still the priority!

Refinishing floors is labor intensive

We (mainly Brandon) have been working to refinish the upstairs floors. Once all the painting was done, that was the next step towards being ready to move the girls’ furniture, books, and toys upstairs and be settled. We had a long weekend with the 4th of July so we thought we could get them sanded and prepped for stain, maybe even stained those days.

How the floors looked at the beginning of the weekend.

In order to prep the floors for sanding, I crawled over each board with a putty knife to locate any nails that either needed pulled up or pounded down. We also had to remove all the quarter round trim and those nails as well. And of course, lots of vacuuming and sweeping of dust from all the plaster repair work.

But our plans of sanding were quickly thwarted when the orbital sander continuously gummed up from the varnish. We had to get an orbital sander because the rental place with the belt sander was closed for the holiday. It was a long, frustrating day trying to figure out what our next steps were going to be. We tried using stripper to take the varnish off, but realized that was going to be way too labor and time intensive. We finally just had to give up the idea/goal of getting the floors sanded that weekend and regroup with different equipment on a different weekend.

This was after a quick pass. We tried to remove the gummy parts but it dried and hardened quickly. So salvaging the sandpaper was impossible.
The goop we were scraping off the floors when we attempted to strip it. What a mess.

So just this past weekend we were able to get a belt sander and it worked MUCH better. It was able to take the varnish up without gumming up. Brandon used a edge sander around the edges of all the walls which was not his favorite task. I used a scraper and mouse sander to touch up the corners. The green room’s closet was too small for the belt sander to get in, so we had to scrap up the varnish with a wire attachment on his cordless drill (we also did that along the walls). It was a very labor intensive project.

Once we had the first sanding done with the belt sander that was returned and he got an orbital again. It was easier to handle and got closer to the edges, so he went over the floor multiple times with varying grits of sandpaper to get a nice, smooth finish.

The natural look was pretty but ultimately decided to go with a stain.

The sanding took a full weekend of work. Now we are going to wipe down all the ceilings, walls and trim to eliminate as much dust as possible. Then go over the floors again to look for any gaps in the boards that will mess up the stain application. THEN we will be ready to stain. The three front runners are in the picture. The floors upstairs are pine and took these stains completely different from the oak floors downstairs. So we will be using two different stains. Then the poly coat will go on and cure for several days. It was definitely a good idea to start upstairs and get some practice in before conquering the downstairs.

Can you guess which one we chose?

Gutting the Bathroom

Where to start?

Where to start would be finding someone to work on it. Contractors are really booked right now from playing catch up from projects delayed by COVID. I would really like to get this project done before we moved in since it is the only bathroom in the house.

So you can kind of see the current layout. The sink is just peeking out from behind the door.

Layout

The current layout looks okay in that picture, but what you can’t see is the shower/tub is really narrow. What you can see is how the shower curtain is not vertical because of where the rod has to be placed due to the door and door frame. What that all means is you get “attacked” by the shower curtain. It only wants to suction to you and not hang like it’s supposed to. I thought about getting one of the curved rods to give more space for now, but I’m not sure it would work with the door opening. And the shower curtain would probably have to be longer to be effective. Another fun part of the bathroom and shower is the light switch is actually located IN the shower. Yeah, that wouldn’t pass any inspections these days.

So what I’m thinking might work is to move the shower over by the window (if we lose that window it’s fine with me), move the toilet where the sink is, and move the sink where the shower/tub is now. Currently across from the toilet is a linen closet, which is great. It provides lots of storage, so I’m hoping we will still have space for something similar.

The door swing may be changed to allow more room in the bathroom as well. It swings into the room now and that takes up a lot of potential space. I’ve also looked at a split door which may work, too. The square foot area of the bathroom isn’t terrible, but the layout doesn’t use the space as efficiently as it could.

What’s next?

Besides finding a contractor, the one thing we did do was pull up the carpet (yes, carpet) that was on the floor. It had been there a long time.

It makes it slightly better.

I think that the original floor was probably wood and was rotting since it is a bathroom and was wet a lot. Then they put another layer of wood on top because you can kind of tell in the picture that it’s not level with the floor in the hallway and the boards are going in opposite directions. Then when those boards started to rot (there’s evidence of that) they slapped some carpet on it and called it a day.

The walls are not drywall or plaster, but some kind of paneling. It is very rough. Every time Morgan has to take a bath she says “We’ve GOT to do something with this bathroom.” I swear she thinks we are just going to redo the rest of the house and leave what is probably the worst part as is. Oh, Morgan.

Colors and decorating

I have a color picked out for the walls. It’s a dark green. Not the same as the Green Room upstairs, but it may get changed to that because I like that color a lot. I think the bottom half or 2/3 will be either board and batten or a bead board that is white. That style goes with a Craftsman house and would look nice. I don’t have a picture of the medicine cabinet, but I plan to refinish that and use it above the sink.

So, stick around and see what actually happens with the bathroom. And when it happens since it might be more in the long-term than short-term.

Ceiling Fixes

Natalie’s Room

The Pink Room/Natalie’s Room had a basketball size piece of plaster that had fallen off the ceiling. Most likely due to water damage. Obviously, that was a main repair Brandon tackled first upstairs. The rest of the plaster on the ceiling and walls was in good shape except for the normal cracks. The closets in all the bedrooms upstairs were the worst for cracks. I think that was due to the angles and temperature fluxes in those areas.

The reason Morgan chose the room with the smaller closet. I guess she thought we weren’t going to fix it?

Just like with the cracks in the walls, this had to get worse before it got better. Brandon made the hole larger until the plaster was tight with the lath on the ceiling.

I’m pretty sure this was about his stopping point for making it larger.

After this point, he used some plaster to start mending the hole. The plaster was hard to work with because it set so fast. This was also one of the first projects he did. I’m guessing if he did it now, he would be much faster at applying the plaster. After one layer of plaster and sanding, I’m pretty sure he moved to mud for the next layer. I believe it took three layers before he was happy with the blending and sanding.

Checking out his handy work.

We have primed and painted it. You can’t tell it was ever there. And now Morgan is questioning her decision about room choice. 😉

Looks pretty darn good for his first ceiling plaster repair.

Morgan’s Room

The Blue Room/Morgan’s Room didn’t have a hole in it, but we could see where there was water damage on the ceiling and when we pushed up on the plaster, there was a bubble formed.

No hole, but still needed work.

Brandon really didn’t want to cut out the plaster (Natalie’s room was a lot of messy, dusty work looking up at a ceiling) so he researched ways he could repair it without cutting any out. I’m pretty sure this is the video he watched and read from on how to make the repair. He got two packs of these from Ace, not Amazon, though. 🙂

It is secured to the lath and ready for mudding and sanding.
This is from a different angle but you can see that it’s covered up and looks pretty good.

Green Room

Ugh, the green room. It (and Morgan’s room) had wallpaper. Didn’t really realize it until we started doing the crack repairs and it peeled. At first we weren’t that concerned about it. The girls had a blast using the various putty knives to peel it from the ceilings and the walls.

Besides throwing boxes over the banister, this was probably their favorite task.
Yes, Natalie was right up there helping to peel it off, too. Neither girls seem to have a fear of heights or ladders. The floor was COVERED with wallpaper shreds.

After we peeled off everything we could get with the putty knives, Brandon went over it with his sander to catch any other edges. Then did some mudding to remove any ridges. So we thought it was good to go for priming and painting. BUT when we started priming the ceiling (and the walls), that dang (keeping it PG here) wallpaper bubbled right up. It was frustrating and timewise a set back, but in the grand scheme of rehabbing an old house, not an expensive set back. So we got to get out the putty knives again and start Round #2. After that round of mudding and sanding, the prime did hold. There were a few tiny bubbles show up, but we looked the other way and kept on painting. I’ve painted over a lot of wallpaper and never had that happen when it’s felt so tight to the wall to begin with.

It’s Done and look at the “new” green in the green room. I LOVE it. I’m wondering where else I can put this color.

And to cap off the wallpaper issues, when we peeled off the tape on the ceiling to do the wall color, of course some wallpaper peeled off with it. So Brandon went around and had to touch it up in all the bedrooms. We are glad to be done painting upstairs!

Refinishing the floors

So obviously we were excited to find hardwood floors downstairs when we pulled up a corner of the carpet. We did that WAY before we had painted because we were curious. Considering the upstairs had hardwood, we were pretty sure the downstairs would as well. Although the upstairs is a wider plank and I think a different wood than is downstairs. I’ll try to get a better picture of the upstairs floors this weekend. They are currently covered in a lot of dust, so that may prove difficult.

Pulling the carpet

This part was fun for me and the girls liked it too. It was a big deal to get to the point where we could pull it up and get it out of the house. My lungs were really excited about it. Plus, it was fun to find out what was underneath that 50+year old carpet. Below is a link to a video of the girls pulling up the carpet.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7jXflUYWfHs

Then it was pulling up all the staples and tack strips. It’s a job I don’t mind at all. Morgan and I had a pretty good system for it, too. She would pop the staples up with a flathead screwdriver and I would follow behind and get them with the needle nose pliers. Brandon worked on the tack strips while us girls did the staples. Natalie floated in and out of both processes as 3 year old’s do.

Process that we will most likely follow

Once we got the carpet up, we could see that the floors would need refinishing. The living room has a rug-sized area that is a different stain than the rest of the floors. Plus the south facing windows in the dining room and office/computer room created some sun damage to the floors.

This shows the two different stains and the “rug” that was stained around.

We are going to start upstairs with the refinishing because neither of us have ever refinished floors so we want to start in the rooms where most people probably won’t see. So if we screw up it’s not at the front door when you walk in the house. I am hoping this weekend we get the rest of the upstairs painted, so we can start prepping for the refinishing. I know we will have to get all the quarter round off, which means we will have to label all of it and try to bundle it by room/closet. Then there’s the dust that will need vacuumed, mopped, and vacuumed some more before we even start sanding and creating more dust. We will be getting the ducts cleaned after all this dust has been floating around. 🙂

Brandon and I both have longer weekends over the 4th, so I am thinking we should be making good progress upstairs those days. Once that is done, I’m going to move the girls air mattress upstairs to get them used to sleeping upstairs and farther than a few feet away from us (at either house). I think that will be a major hurdle. I predict it will take a long time before they are sleeping in their own rooms upstairs.

Stain Color

Of course with all this progress on the floors means we need to choose a stain color. I’m pretty decisive when it comes to paint because I know that can be changed relatively easy in the future. But the stain color makes me a little nervous. It’s a big commitment. I don’t think I want to match the trim exactly due to the amount of red that is in the trim. I think that I want something slightly lighter and more neutral in color if that makes sense. So going back to the “rug” picture above, I want more of the rug color, less of the border color. Anyone have any thoughts on that issue? The built ins are even a different color than the trim, so I think it will be fine if the floors don’t match the trim.