AC Capehart capehart

Day 10. The waxing day. So today is the day I most dreaded. Much of this process was new and scary to me, but for most of it I had some sense of what I should do. Some guide, some hint of the right thing to do. Well, I guess I had a hint about the waxing, but much less than any other part. The video wasn’t that helpful, and the voiceover guy in the video turned out to have been reading almost exactly word for word the instructions on the wax can.

Day 9. Saturday. I slept in ’til 9:30. I was hoping to clean and wax today. So, I went to United Rental looking for the floor machine and brushes I needed. I figured I’d go ahead and get a wet/dry vac for the cleaning too. They didn’t know much about the conststancy or material about the brushes they had, so I took them all. And, they didn’t have a wet/dry vac.

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.

Day 7. I got up about 8:30 and was working on the floor in a little over half an hour. Al had called last night in response to my query about the sander. He said it was probably just the bushings and would be an easy repair. Continue to work with it and when it stopped working, take and get it fixed. It probably worked for a good 10 minutes before it gave up the ghost.

Again up around 9:30. Bob was still here. I managed to have perfect timing though. I went downstairs when he was in the shower, and then went to food lion for orange juice (we were out). As I was coming back to Gateway Circle, I saw Bob pulling into the McDonalds for breakfast. So, again a quick breakfast and back to the floor. This time, I did a more systematic sanding slowly back and forth across the entire section of floor.

Day 5. I arose rather late (9:30?) and came downstairs to find Al doing Yoga in our kitchen. He was doing the “Breath of Joy” After a small breakfast, we started in with the sanding. Al had brought a rotary sander (kind of like a power drill) and a belt sander. We were sanding around the edges where the grinder just couldn’t get. It was slow going. VERY slow going. The image that came to mind was cleaning the statue of liberty with a toothbrush.

Day 4. I thought of all sorts of ways to begin this entry. “It’s weird cutting lines into your floor with a circular saw.” Or “Man, concrete dust is something else. It really does get everywhere!” Or “I was right, scoring the floor did help me feel like the project is really progressing.” And they are all true to at least some degree. So, here’s the deal. I got up at 6:45 AM today to go return the grinder to sunbelt rentals.

Santa (Al) comes monday to help. I’m pleased and relieved. But I need to get up and return the scraper thing before 9:00 AM Monday, and need to pick up more supplies both there and at Lowes. This is going to be a long project. It feels like it’s already been a long project. I’m glad I took a bit of a break this evening to play with CJ and watch eXistenZ (a weird “majestic” type movie).

Eve and Tom just left. And this morning/afternoon, we laid out the scoring pattern. There are a couple of tricky spots, but I think it will be pretty straightforward. Joe indicated he might come by this weekend and see what it looks like. If Monday at noon (or shortly after) comes and goes and I’ve not heard from him, I’m going to give him a call. But either way, I’m going to find out if he’d be willing to come score after work Monday or Tuesday.

Day 2. (AC, Eve & Tom with moving help from bk and CJ) Well, we just completed day 2. It feels like we’ve made a lot of progress, but what remains is still fairly daunting. Today, we finished moving the remainder of the furniture to storage, and started ripping up the carpet. The carpet itself came up quite easily. The padding underneath was glued down around the edges, and the carpet was pressed into tackboard around the edges.