August 2022 - Erin's Middle Niche

(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.

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.

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.

Friday Favorites

Just a few favorites to wrap up our week. I might make this a regular post to keep people in touch with what is going on with all of us. It will probably be picture heavy.

One of our walks along the canal after a picnic. What kid doesn’t love throwing walnuts and rocks in to water?

Throwing walnuts led Morgan and Brandon down the rabbit hole of harvesting walnuts. Now, Morgan thinks we are going to forage pounds of walnuts. Their method of cracking them will have to be more efficient. 🙂

And about 20 selfies by a 3 year old are always entertaining.

New bedding made their rooms extra fun and bright. Thanks Grandma Debbie, Aunt Jacque and Aunt Sheri!

Both girls wanted rainbows for their rooms. Makes it fun to add pops of color. I’m working on a fun art project for their walls. Hopefully it will work and I’ll share soon.

Turns out we are fitting in a lot of activities these first couple of weeks. I’m sure it will slow down once I get back to work, but for now it’s easy to fill up a post with highlights from the week. I left out the trip to Starved Rock, but it deserves a post of it’s own soon. 🙂

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.

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!