Day 8
Again, up at 8:30 and after a quick balance bar for breakfast I’m at the floor again. This time, I do a little clean up. Our trash piles had been piling up, and I’d left stuff in a bit of a state the previous evening having been so tired.
I call up Joe and he comes over. He does a general mopping with TSP while I scrub extra hard in the cat corners. I still don’t know if it does (did) any good, but I did everything I could think to do there. If this doesn’t do it, little else could.
After this cleaning, we’re ready to stain. Well, kinda. We still need to let it dry, and hang paper to protect the walls from overspray. When we’re done with hanging the paper, we watch the video one more time (Joe’s second viewing, my 4th) to make sure we know as much as we can about the spraying. Since I don’t want to pay Joe to help me watch my floor dry, he goes back to Store-It-Right. I appreciate his hours flexibility. He requests that I call him up so he can watch me start the spray process, and says he won’t charge me for that visit.
Around 2:00, I give him a call and he comes over bringing his dad and his partner in the Store-It-Right venture (and others?). They are apparently fairly clued in and ask various questions, make suggestions and are generally curious. I start spraying.
It was weird to be cutting lines in my concrete slab. It was even weirder to be spraying hydrochloric acid on my concrete slab. It’s weird to watch. As the spray first hits the slab, there are whisps of smoke as the acid burns into the concrete. Joe’s partner and dad head to the car and Joe asks me what I think. I shrug. It looks wet. I was hoping it would look colored, but I’m not yet disheartened as the videos say that you may not get any color until the drying of the second coat. Joe takes dad and partner away and returns as I’m finish that coat. We both take a gander and agree. It looks wet.
Joe leaves and I clean up from that process, putting a forbodeing X in the doorway made from lumber and CJ’s broom. At least I hope it’s foreboding. I had left the acid and sprayer on the front deck. Finally, I decided not to risk it, and moved it inside. I’d left it out front originally because I didn’t want to risk it screwing up the parquet floor, but I just imagined the “attractive menace” lawsuit when some kid dared some other kid to try drinking whatever was in that bottle.
I play StarCraft and AIM with Carolyn while the floor dries. Around 6:30, I return for the second coat. The first one actually looks interesting now. There are patches where it is strongly rust colored, and patches where it appears not to have taken at all. Unfortunately, places where it didn’t take at all include the patches we put in. Apparently there was no lime in the concrete patch material. So, they stand out a bit. Oh well.
I put down the second coat and it goes pretty well, but I have trouble keeping the sprayer pumped up sufficiently. Finally, just as I’m putting the finishing touches on, it breaks. The documentation said to use an all-plastic garden insectiside sprayer which is what I thought I had, but I guess there was enough metal or something in it that the acid ate it up. But it did what I needed it to, so good enough. I finish with a gallon of the stuff still unopened. I hope to sell it to Joe since he’s thinking to do this again some time.
The second coat is down, and by now mostly dry. It’s still hard to tell what it will look like done because there’s a lot of residue making it look even more patchy than I think it will in the end. Tomorrow I clean (again.) This time, just with water. I think I’ll rent a wet/dry vac to clean it up though. I’m certainly making progress. I did think it would be easier to get to this point than it has been, but there it is. The stain is down. The video has 4 steps:
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Clean
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Stain
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Wash
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Wax/Seal
So, I guess I’m 1/2 way through. And after only 8 days 😉
AC
Joe hours: 10:30-12:00 1.5 hrs.