Happy Halloween

We had a Star Wars theme this year.

Queen Amadala (for those of you that are not die hard fans--Luke Skywalker's mother.)

Yoda

Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vadar before he turns to the dark side)

The Loot

Progress on the Stairs

Jim did inset panels up the staircase and in front of it. We're still in the finishing phases but I had to share.

World's Smallest Vacuum(er)

Benny was helping Daddy with the stairs. Jim is currently working some magic on the stairs with some inset frames. More pictures to come as he progresses...

Pillows for Benny

Funny Things...

that Nora has said lately:

It was late on a saturday morning and I had been hinting at the kids to get dressed and get outside. I saw the neighbor's kids dressed and outside so I said, "Wow, look at them. They're already outside, dressed and everything!" Nora looks outside and says, "Well, we're not that kind of family."

Nora was telling me one of her long stories about something that happened at school. I was listening but I was saying, "yup, yeah, wow, uh-huh" while she was telling me the story. So she stops and says, "Are you really listening because those are the things that adults says to kids when they're not really listening."

Downs of Renovation...

So, I haven't blogged for awhile but there is a reason. The reason is our living room floor. When we last left you we were excited to begin sanding, staining and varnishing our living room floor so that the entry way into our house would be done. Well we spent a weekend sanding the old floor down to the bare wood. We had to rent two different sanders as well as an edge sander. Then we had to use a hand sander to take out any gouge marks from the edge sander (which we called "the destructor"). In short we did a lot of sanding. Then we were ready to stain. We went over and over which stain to use to match, or at least come close to, our stair treads. We tried plain stains, we tried mixing some stains. We tried everything and finally found one that we thought looked good. So then we stained. We did it in the evening, when the kids were in bed, so that it could try and air out over night. And this is what it looked like:

We went to bed that night thinking that it looked good and we were happy.

But then the next day, in the light of day, we realized that the stain looked purple! Ugh! We don't know what went wrong. Did we mix the wrong ones? Did they have a reaction? We didn't know but we weren't happy with it. So we tried putting some stains over a sample piece that we had but that didn't look right. It just looked muddy. So we gave in and we sanded the entire floor again! Then we carefully tried another set of stains to see if it would match and we stained in the light of day. The next color looked good but there were some spots where the stain wouldn't absorb so we sanded that off and applied more stain but the edges of those spots looked darker than the rest of the floor so we lightly sanded those. We were so tired of dealing with this that we considered just ripping up the whole floor and putting down prefinished. But we decided to stick with it. So finally we put down some poly last night and I think we're good (see top two pictures). Finally...

Movin' on Up

Now that we're done with the mud room, it's time to tackle the stairs. I painted the ballusters and stained/varnished the railing while Jim is working on the floor. There was some debate on whether to rip up all the floors and replace them or to just try to patch and match. We decided to go the patching route. In the end it will mean less money and less waste. We're going to put in the new floor and sand it all down, including the old stuff, stain and varnish. It should be messy but what house project isn't right? Jim is planning on showing off some of his crazy carpenter skills on the stairs case. I'll show you plenty of pictures as he gets going. I just can't wait for people to walk into our house and not say, "Oh you're under construction, still..."

Here you can see the new floor and what we have to match. Wish us luck!