Let the Floor Staining Commence

It's all done. Finally. It turned about to be a little bigger job than I had initially thought - but mostly due to the fact that we were performing some of the steps without the benefit of powered machinery. All in all, it came out just fantastic. The floor went from the picture at the left to the picture at the bottom of the blog post. The process started way back when we stripped the carpet and cleaned the heck out of the floor - we never were able to strip the carpet glue all up - but it's OK.
The actual staining process began with protecting the walls with plastic. Once that was up, then the staining began. Pretty easy really - just a one gallon garden sprayer with the stain mixture in it. Smooth, even circular sprays of stain went down. We did decide to use a mop to "spread" the stain where it was a little heavy in areas. We let that dry for an hour or so and then came back in with the cleanup.
Now, I should give everyone fair warning - this was the toughest step... by far. We did this using simple cotton mops. I'm not sure how many other options there are for a homeowner (short of buying or renting equipment). This took quite a lot to get the excess stain up. At this point, the stain is dry and you're mopping up dry surface stain... as much as you can with a mop. The idea is to clean until you get "clear" water... quite frankly, we were just shooting for "translucent". After about 5 moppings with hose rinsing the mop after each section, we finally decided we had reached our peak of "translucency" (is that a word?). Anyway, "translucency" equals "exhaustion". So, we stopped and hoped for the best.
We let the floor dry overnight, went to church the next morning, and then came home and proceeded with the step of sweeping the floor until almost every microscopic speck of dust was gone... this may have been overkill.
We then used paint rollers on long handles to "roll" the cement sealant on the floor. One coat, let dry for 2 hrs, then the 2nd coat. That's what really brought the color and sheen to the floor.
We love our new basement floor!

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Let There be Light!

We now have 6 can lights in the basement instead of the previous 4... and what a huge difference. Not really so obvious on the picture, but light level is much better. And since we seem to have an addiction to dimmers around here, we, of course, added dimmers on all the lights. It will make for quite an ambience.

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Painting - Done. Well, Almost.

Whew. It has been a VERY long weekend of painting - painting a 720 sq ft room... including doors, door casings, trim, etc... I'm glad it's done... well, it's all done except the stair case railing. We're still deciding if we're going to paint that right away or not. I think we will. But I have to say, aching back and all, it just looks great. The new colors really make the room feel so warm and cozy... and we haven't even put in the wood stove yet! So, here are the pics....

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Mid-Day Painting Update

The painting of the basement walls is going quite well today. I must give Valspar paint from Lowes' a big thumbs up. It appears as though the main walls will only need one coat of my Caramel Toffee paint (the picture makes it look a little oranger than it is). I think I might need another coat on some of the trimmed out areas, but that's easy enough to deal with. So after painting Grace's room with the cheap-o paint from Walmart (two coats required - and sometimes three!), you're definitely money ahead to buy the Valspar at Lowes' (Lowes' can send my endorsement check to 179...).

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Let the Basement Remodeling Begin...

So, I decided I'd had enough of the old, thrown-together-with-whatever we-could-dig-out-of-the-trash or-beg-off-family-and-friends basement. That's right, the 70's avacado green, orange, and harvest gold couch is OUTTA HERE (I've included some terribly embarrassing pictorial proof of the appearance of my basement before)! We had also had enough of the nasty carpet. A basement is just not a good place to have carpet. Now, granted, our basement is probably 95% dry (except in very extreme wet conditions & then only wet in specific small areas...), but there's still always the battle of the general presence of a musty aura.

So, the seating furniture has sold (it's a miracle). I will take the end tables & coffee table and refinish those next week. We have emptied the room of everything... and I mean EVERYthing. We pulled the carpet, the carpet pad, the baseboards, scraped carpet glue residue, scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, (did I mention I've scrubbed the floor?) Yes, it's now down to bare cement floors. This weekend I will paint the walls (a fabulous rusty burnt orange) and trim work (cream) - (normally I'd wait until after the floor, but a timeline is pushing me :-). I'll post some after pictures of how that turns out next week. We'll add and move lighting next week as well. After that, the staining of the cement floor will begin... and that is some very cool stuff! Due to a fine kinfolk of mine named Clint Howle, I will have the added luxury of using one of the best products around on my cement floor... Dye-n-Seal from Ameripolish. This stuff will make my project a cinch... or at least relatively speaking. The whole concept is that you get yourself down to a clean cement floor, apply the stain via a spray on technique, do some post-stain cleaning, and then apply a sealant to protect and seal the B-E-A-UTIMUS cement floor you've just created. This will be very cool indeed. Clint's Ameripolish website has some fantastic pictures of jobs they've done around the area... some REALLY impressive stuff. I know I had no idea that some of the things they did were possible with concrete dies. These guys are talented. Now, since this is more of a DIY project, the intricacy of the project is much simplified... I'll be using one dye... Saddle Brown. And I won't be scoring the surface or anything fancy like that. But what a huge difference this is going to make to the look of our basement living area! I can't wait to see it all finished. I'll keep you posted!

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The Meaning of Life

The chickens are running... well, not exactly. But, we finally have our garage back! It’s such a wonderful thing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the sound of cheep cheep cheep… but the smell of poop poop poop was getting to me. The “ladies” are out in their new house now… just where they should be. And they are oooooh soooo happy! A few have tried to become escape artists but only in vain. That's right. There's no "run" for them right now... just a spacious mansion in which to walk about and ponder the meaning of life.

The garden is coming right along. Terry now has 2 full strips dug. Working on a 3^rd strip over time – but no rush for this year. So far I can see my cucumbers, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and peppers all growing nicely! We’ve also added another strip over along the north side of the upper lawn for Sunflowers! I can’t wait. It will be a big beautiful row of Mammoth Sunflowers layered with smaller sunflowers layered with Shasta daisies & marigolds. What a wall of HAPPY!

Grace has moved out. Out of her nursery into her big girl bedroom… and she is quite happy to be there. I wondered how she’d handle the change of venue, but it’s been quite smooth… illnesses and all. Yes, we’ve all been passing around a nasty little virus of head and cough congestion. The other 2 ran fevers… so far I’ve been luckier. ANYWAY, Grace’s new room is about the girliest thing I’ve ever seen. I have to admit, it was quite an involved process getting all the "layers" of paint on the wall. Normally I don't have the patience for such a thing but I mean, come on, it's Grace's room! Those are “Candy tuft” pink walls with “Sassy pink” stripes. And the polka dots really add some Gracie flare, don’t you think? We bought the bed used through Craigslist (Sherry’s personal addiction), and the dresser came from Craigslist as well. It got refinished – painted, and tumble-polished hardware, and now is a great dresser with plenty of room for ALL Gracie’s clothes… and let me tell you, she’s got a ton of clothes (thanks Barb)! Anyway, the change from crib and rails to wall-less toddler bed went fairly well... Grace did manage to fall out of bed a couple times the first night! We have since added a small little partition (i.e. white plastic cutting board) on the outside edge in the middle section to help keep her from falling out again... so far it has worked. Who knew cutting boards could be so versatile?

It's not all been all about chores and painting... we've been having some fun time too. Grace has spent many of these nice summer days on the back deck reading in her patio set. She's also donned her sunglasses and played it cool with her very cool dog Zelda.

I wish I was a kid again.

And with all that said, the title of this post was "The Meaning of Life" No, this is no reference to a Monty Python movie. This is just reality... everyday day-to-day stuff...what many would consider the boring filler. But I disagree. The meaning of life is what God provides for us everyday - some chickens to laugh at, a garden to dig in, a little girls' room to obsess over (ha!)... that's the real meaning of life.

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