EAST VAN BY HAND: Stateside

We had to go stateside yesterday to get a few things. We phoned ahead to make sure they were in stock and yes they were except we did have to go to Burlington to pick up one number 3 for our house number. Damn, it made the trip much longer than we had planned. But we did get the three things we came down for.

They had five quarts of the colour stain and we read the can and it said that it wasn't suitable for large areas like floors. The girl in the paint department had no clue and couldn't answer any of our questions. Peter wanted to take the plunge anyway but I wanted to talk to a professional to confirm we could do this. SO I borrowed a phone book and looked up a flooring refinisher and they let me use the phone and I said to the guy,"My Husband and I are trying to refinish our floors and we are at Home Depot and nobody who is working today can answer our questions. Would you mind terribly giving us some advise?" I expained to him that we had fir and oak floors stained two different colors and would it be possible to get them close in color. He said yes but it wouldn't be possible to get an exact match. We asked about the stain and he said that if we knew what we were doing we could use that stain. He told us to apply the stain and wait 48 hours for it to dry otherwise the Urothane would pull the color off. Also we should wet the oak and let it dry to pull up the grain and that would grab the stain. What a nice guy to give us that info. I said if it didn't work out we would call him for sure to fix it. Everyone else at Home Depot was very helpful otherwise.

The reason were doing this whitewash staining on our floors is, Peter found it on The Brick House which is one of our favorite Design Blogs and she featured a house that had a whitewashed matte stain on their floors. So we found the stain but it had to be ordered in and we had to get going on the sanding. So we threw everything down and jumped in the car, left Keaton with Grandma. We found the stuff we needed was half the price in the US. Seriously, it makes me so mad!!!! Why are things twice the price up here!.

You can see the effect on the floor we are trying to acheive. Check out the Chandelier too!

Lindsey Adelman You Make It chandelier

Our floors are in progress. Peter let me try the sander and using it is like trying to tame a bumper car gone wild. I wanted to get off of it after 10mins. I'll try using it again tomorrow, I want some of the glory for doing the house too! We were making excellent progress until we kept blowing a fuse with the sander, after we had been using it all dayin the same outlet. So frustrating for Peter because he could of finished almost all the sanding and then be able to return the sander to the rental place. I think it was a sign from God or Dog that it was time to quit for the day and go back to Grandma's to see Keaton and put her to bed.

Crossing our fingers it will work, he did a few rounds of sanding and the color is coming off but there's still a ways to go.

I also wanted to record some of the garbage I picked up. A large flower pot full of cigarette butts and cigarette packaging, we have found a total of five little dime bags commonly used for drugs. Hmmmmm. Between the spilled paint and the cigarette butts, Peter and I want to erase all proof of existence of the previous owners. When we were house hunting. We saw houses that were in worse condition than the one we got, but come on!!! It was in our contract of sale to take their shit with them! They cleaned up most of it but really! What's with the huge pile of left over wood? We can't use it because it's weird small sizes, we can't burn it in the fireplace because it's treated with chemicals, and bonus! it was mixed up with cigarette butts and a rat's nest with a mummified dried up rat still in it plus all it's shit. Thank God I wore gloves and a mask!!!!

I've loaded the photos onto iphoto but for some reason they don't show up for uploading. This drives me mad!!! This must be a sign for me to go to bed, we have a big day tomorrow.

On the way home Peter and I were talking about how we have the saddest looking house on the block. Not for much longer! We'll be on the lookout to see which house is the second saddest house on our block to take our place when we are done. Stay tuned!