Spring has sprung!

Our garden is planted, and already we have several promising looking sprouts--zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, green bean, wax bean, sugar snap pea, cucumber, carrot and tomato. (The tomato plants were purchased at the farmer's market, so they're significantly more than "sprouts").

Also, last weekend was the first Farmer's Market of the season, and we loaded up on lots of fantastic veggies. Oh, how I've missed the Farmer's Market! We tried bok choy for the first time ever, and I liked it a lot. James liked it a little. Plus, we got fresh eggs, carrots, potatoes, green onions, broccoli, garlic, goat cheese, buttercup lettuce, and the above-mentioned tomato plants. It was quite the bag full by the time I was done.

AND.....I talked to some folks about a farming class that meets on Friday nights, and they said I could join them!!!! So this Friday will be my first class, and I'm super-excited!!!

I never thought gardening or yard work could be tolerable, not to mention fun and exciting, but, boy, have I changed!

Mission Accomplished!

We have refinished our hardwood floors in both the den and the living room. I'm glad I didn't know how hard it would be when we started the project.

First, we ripped up the old carpet and pried up the tack strips lining the walls...

And, by the way, this is what we found under the carpet by the fireplace...

I still don't know what that was. At first I thought it was cement. It was rock-hard and the right color. But I was able to remove it, so it probably wasn't cement. It's anyone's guess.

I removed the cement with the same goop I used to remove the finish from the entire room....a liquid stripper. I had it on good authority that the liquid stripper would be easier and produce superior results as compared to a sander, so I went to work with that. This is what it looked like with about half the room done...

Just so you know....liquid stripper is a bad way to go! It's slow, labor-intensive, hands-and-knees-scraping-and-scrubbing, fumes-that-kill-brain-cells, type of work. A rented drum sander is really the way to go. And that's what we ended up doing after I finished going over the entire living room with the stripper.

This is the drum sander we rented from the Home Depot, with apologies to my dad...

Man! What a difference! That sander is my new favorite! The picture above is after just one swipe over half the den. It really lifted off the old finish easily, and it wasn't hard to control, either--a lot like mowing the lawn (not that I'm too familiar with THAT process, thanks to the best hubbie ever!) And hardly any dust because of the built in vacuum and dust bag. One thing to watch out for--if the dust bag gets too full, the weight will cause it to detach from the sander, and that sawdust will go *poof* out of the bag in a cloud. So if you attempt this project, please for the love of all that is holy remember to check the dust level from time to time!

This is what the floor looked like after we had removed all the old finish in the living room...

The next steps involved using a little Mouse sander to get the edges and corners (apparently, there is a better tool for this task available, but we didn't rent one) and filling in all the cracks and divets with wood filler. Neither of those were too difficult, but we went through a LOT of wood filler. TWO TUBS! Looking back, the floors were in pretty bad condition. I can imagine why the previous owners might have covered them up.

And then...on to the stain! We chose a dark walnut colored stain called, appropriately, Dark Walnut. It was supposed to take 8 hours to dry. It took a week! Good thing we decided to do one room at a time! Here's James putting down the stain...

And here's a pic of the room post-stain, pre-polyurethane...

The poly is down, but I don't have any pictures of the finished product! I'll get some soon. Meanwhile, here are a couple more pics of James and me at work...