who said this was hard??

Not to blow my own horn or anything, but REALLY? I don't want to say that the past day has been easy, because it hasn't been. --the beach in 85 degrees with a cooler of mixers is easy!-- but maybe it's the marketing of companies that need your business that makes people believe that this home improvement stuff is beyond our meager capabilities.

last night, I had to make friends with the crawl space of the house. Nick and I are both a little afraid of the space. it's dirty, dark, there is leftover crap from past projects, not to mention the large white furry spiders that just hang there, and really the only way to get around is on your hands and knees. ugh. so, I had to go down to find a water lever so that I could shut off a water supply that once ran to the fridge that we just sold. when I found it I noticed that it was tied to a larger pipe. me being a novice shut the lever off. this morning, our toilet did not refill after the flush. huh. they tied the ice maker to the toilet. wonderful. so I had the pleasure of going back down to turn the lever back on. after two trips down I am now friends with the crawl space.

On a more exciting note; I have also become friends with a 4 head random orbital (sounds WAY more kinky than it really is) sander. I have successfully sanded the office on the first floor and i'm about 90 percent done with the living space. here are the pictures, see below!


This was where I started with the sanding today at 9am. Nick's office. I think it shows the shit brown very well on the floor. it's great.



Here you see the brown paint and the beautiful wood underneath it. I think it's cedar. It smells like cedar. but, i'm a novice. maybe it's pine? either way, it is going to be out of this world when it's finished.



This is about noon time today 9/19/09. You can see how this floor looked when I got to it. Nick had to sink all the nails down in order for me to do this. so while i was sanding his office he was hammering. we are a very effective team.



This was after the first pass on this floor. just around 2pm. the darker spots are what i thought was the floor boards, but NO it was another coat of POLY!! hmmmm why am I not surprised? this took a long time to work down to wood. i told nick that it was like trying to melt ice in the winter. LOTS of friction needed.



So here is how we rounded out our day. Elyse and Michelle came to bring us dinner (pizza, beer, and cookies) it may sound simple, but if you know these two you know that it is always homemade and delish! Yum. Elyse and Michelle also stayed and helped to do some sanding/edging and paint removal from some tiles in the dining room. AND don't think that we didn't get a few good photos of you. we will be posting them soon!

So lastly I need to mention the work that Nick has done. NIck has done some clean up on the floors and the edging for the entire first floor. (the machine for this is heavy, and you have to hold it and bend over with it, so that it doesn't stop moving). my back would not be able to do what he is doing. so I would be doing it by hand. the photos of this are coming, and we'll try to post them tomorrow. stay tuned.