After years of use the boards are still green

At 6:01 am Saturday morning we rolled out of bed and into the mini-van to pick up a belt sander and edger from Tony at Home Depot. We had grand plans to sand six rooms, four with thick black tar, down to the original wood. With an array of sand paper grits and tools we got started, paper to floor, at 7:30.

Kate went to work from 1-6 at the Banana and I had a two hour break as well during that time, but other then that I worked straight through to 11:30 pm. Kate, having gone to bed earlier the night before, got up at 7 and made pancakes and then got started on the floors at 8:30 while I slept in till 10:30. We worked until 10 that night when my body shut down. After over 25 hours of work hunched over an edger and pushing the sander we had finished 3 rooms, got a good start on two others, and left the other one for another day.

Kate and I laid in bed Sunday night, unable to sleep despite the intense physical exhaustion and giggled at how naive we are. It was hard to see how much work we did because we thought we would get it finished and we didn't. The disappointment was stronger Monday morning as sore muscles made even small walks tough. We also woke to find that someone had broken into our car and stolen the radio and the good batch of CDs. By Monday evening we had taken stock of the tremendous job we had done during the weekend and made plans to finish this coming weekend. We made a good run at it and the sanded floors looked amazing. The wood is poplar and has a green hue to it in parts. We are debating staining it or just covering it with a clear coat, but either way the whole feel of the house changed in one weekend. Like Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier it was those floors meeting our sweat that made that house truly ours.