The last few weeks have been...OH such a joy! It's a feeling that hangs somewhere on the balance of pure indulgent happiness and on the other less glamorous side, psychotic episodes of torment.

This is the story of how I approached phase three of my cunning plan of renovations, which I have coined....'Domination of the Floors'.

Phases 1: Show No Quarter, Fill the Gaps.
The first week of reno was all about filling in the holes and the cracks, 36 tubes of no more gaps now hold our house in place. The places was 'holier' than the Vatican. Up and down the ladder, 12" ceilings mind you. What a uplifting process it was. When I think about that job my mind drifts off....I'm running through a field of long grass and flowers, hair blowing in the wind, stopping to gently caress and cuddle soft little bunnies and other woodland creatures......then I go postal.

Phases 2: White is the New Black
The second week was all about paint. Some of it actually got on the walls the rest on me. Did I mention white?

Phase 3: Domination of the Floors
First I had to rip up all the carpet in the house, the dust, the sand. No matter how many times I wash I still feel dirty. What was revealed was hardwood floors....oh yeah, not chip board. But they were almost black. Why, because house's of this era used to get oiled to preserve them. I'll talk more on this sensitive issue later.

The next job was to bang down nails. Every nail in the house needed to be banged in with a mallet and nail punch. And not just a tap, these brutes need to go in over an inch, it's an Imperial house not metric ;-) and this requires a lot of yakka. Oh Joy!  The problem is that because the house is so old there was nails from all sorts of different things that had happened in the house. Floor rugs had been nailed down, carpets nailed in, and generally nails for nails sake. I'm sure at some stage in the 1940's there was a family of 'Nail Enthusiasts' living in the house, that to amuse themselves on weekends they would gather in the lounge room and bang in nails for a good time. But because the floor was 'black' from years of oil etc I couldn't actually see all the nails. More on this later.

Next job was to putty fill all the holes made by driving in the nails. Thousands of holes. On my knees, or on all fours which ever hurt the least. Pretty picture eh?
I'm drawing closer to the fun part. The power tools! ARH ARHG
I hired a belt sander and disc edger, both beautiful machines. Shiny and silver and smooth and POWERFUL! They usually make light work of floorboard sanding, however due to the fact that our floors were covered in black muck they just baked the oil into hundreds of sanding belts and discs, and at $9.00 a belt it was looking pricey. 
In any case a job that should have taken one day took three. 
I've finished now and as a reward Kim is sending me off for a few days rest at Happy Valley Psychiatric Retreat. 

HERE'S THE RUB.......
It was looking like an expensive job, what with all the burnt out sanding belts and discs and the 2 extra day's hire of the machines. But when Kim took all the hire gear and the remaining sanding belts back to 'XXXXX' Hardware store, she must have got served by some pimple faced twit that struggled with the buttons and paperwork required, which resulted in them saying something along the lines of 'It's a bit too difficult, how about we reimburse you for the unused sanding belts and don't worry about the extra days hire'. 
Which means instead of paying THEM they paid US and didn't charge us for the two extra days hire. Gold!
Ro 


(Figure 1: Me jumping for joy after finishing sanding)




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the renovation gods are smiling down on you :)

Miss Oxford said...

Yippee. Can't wait to have a look! Might pop around tonight after work... bet it's come up a treat! x

Meg Rayner said...

Score!
Wow what a transformation. It looks great.