Pretty Package

My package wrapping supplies got reorganized and tidied in the aftermath of the refinished floor project.  That meant that I could easily find a purple ribbon when the boy made a request for me to wrap a package he intends to give to a certain young lady.  

That’s happy!

Floored, Part 2

We couldn’t stay in the house while the floors were being sanded, stained, and re-finished with polyurethane, a 7-day process.  At the start of the week, JT and I hit the road to visit some colleges (more on that later).  We returned to floors in the process of being re-finished.  

  

To finish our week away, JT headed out to wrestling camp at a local university.  I stayed with T.  That was last Thursday and from that day on, I stalked my house every day, checking out the progress on the floors as the stain and polyurethane were applied.  The floors are a similar color to before, a slightly more golden brown with a semi-gloss finish.  I like the shine and think it coordinates nicely with the 1930s chestnut woodwork that trims the first floor of the house.

A week after our departure, on Monday, June 26, we picked up the cats and came home to our newly refinished floors.  The shiny downstairs floors had a hollow echo in the half-empty house, and this freaked out the cats.  Tiger and Lucy spent the next 48 hours meowing their displeasure at the indignities they endured.  

JT and I lured a friend into helping us unload the Pod storage bin.   Once our things were back inside, I began to unpack and generally return our house to it’s homey status.

There was chaos, of course.  The antique farm table in our dining room had to be put back together, a task left to the organized and capable T.  She also got the TV back in business and had already left me in good shape to resume internet connectivity  I took on the rest of the house and piece by piece, things came back together.  The living room and book corner were first, because these books are my happy place.

The dining room and china cabinet came next.  My collection of antique dishes was unwrapped and stored away.  Craft projects and pictures were stored back into my corner cabinet and the dining room is now tidy and organized (well, except for JT’s pile of messy shoes…..some things are eternal, I guess).

The pictures and knock knacks that make our house a home are back in place and the study is unpacked. 

There is nothing like being away from home to remind you how lovely and nice the comforts of home make life.  I love my house and home, no matter it’s disarray.  But the charms of the newly renovated floors in my tidied and organized home are even better.  That’s happy!

Floored, part 1

We have lived in Sassafras House for 12 years.  The house has wood floors both upstairs and down. The upstairs floors are the original 1930s pine, stained in a warm golden color, with a polyurethane finish.  They were in good shape when I moved in and remain in good shape today.  The downstairs floors are oak, likely replacement floors, and sealed with a wax finish.  They are also lovely but wax is a less durable seal and over the years, the floors have been worn in places.  And so the month of June has been devoted to re-finishing the downstairs floors, an easy task to contemplate in February when the plan was first made, but a whole lot more insane as the deadline approached.  For most of the past month, we’ve lived in a house with boxes of our things tucked into the corners.

Step one was to hustle the cats off to a pet boarding facility.  Driving these cats anywhere is no easy task, but JT helped and the job was done.  I’d been packing first floor boxes for weeks, so the packing was nearly complete.  It’s rather a big job to sift through twelve years of accumulated things and it was a long overdue task.  Plenty of items were sent on to their next chapter in life,  but a whole lot got packed up and stored in a Pod storage bin that sat in our driveway, which was a clever and relatively easy solution to our storage needs.

That left us with an empty house and pretty clear evidence that these floors were overdue to be refinished.  

Dining Room

Living Room

Study

Kitchen