Day 3, Ogden Enterprise

I spent most of the day on my hands and knees--or bent over like a crone. Today was floors, floors, and more floors. I was pretty pleased with the results after the first sanding. This is what they looked like:

There was already a big difference! But we had a lot more work to do, and we didn't get the sander returned by 9 am. Instead, we went ahead and kept it for the full 24 hours. That meant we had to get it back by 6 pm.


After the first sanding, Joe applied filler to the entire floor with a trowel:

Here's the filler we used:

Apparently some people just use this to fill big gouges in the floor. Of course, we had plenty of those! But if you apply filler to the whole floor, it fills in all of the cracks and nail holes, which makes it look really professional. After the filler was applied to both rooms, it was sanded with the drum sander with a 60 grit sandpaper and then again at 100 grit. In between, Joe was telling me to find any cracks in the floor that were still not filled and touch them up.

We finished with the drum sander at about 5:30 which gave us just enough time to get it returned. Then we came home and took turns using the orbital hand sander on the edges.

 This doesn't even look like the same floor, does it?

Hand sanding takes the longest, and is the hardest work.We had to take several breaks. During some of our breaks we went outside and watered the lawn -- which, of course, is completely dead. Of course. We met our neighbors, who are fabulous. They are glad to have someone move in who is going to take care of the place.

After a quick shower, I fell into bed exhausted. I should say, I fell upon my mat. I am not comfortable sleeping on the floor, and I can't wait for my bed to arrive. But I really want to finish the floors before the furniture gets here, so I guess I'll put up with it!