My excuse this time

The house in which we live is about fifty years old and has wood floors in the original parts of the house. As we discovered when we removed the carpet in the living room, the house used to have a different structure. When first built, the entryway opened into a hall with a door straight ahead leading to a sitting room. To the right was a door leading to a dining room with built-in cabinets (china hutch?) on the south wall. This would have been a tiny dining room, allowing for no more than six people.

When someone along the way decided to remove the interior walls to create one large room of the two small ones and the hall, rather than replacing the vacated wall plates (bottom 2 X 4s) with oak, they just nailed in some scrap wood and laid carpet. When we made the decision to rip out the carpet, I removed the scrap wood and pieced in oak planks. There were also several squares in the floor where an oil burning heater had vents and these had to be pieced in as well. That was about three years ago (um, okay, maybe four or five). Anyway, we just never got around to sanding the floor and refinishing it.

Several weeks ago, I got a carpenter to agree to send his team to the house to do this task. Scheduling was a problem due to the fact that I would be gone to Galveston for a week (see posting below). So we finally agreed on Wednesday, April 4, as a start date. That meant that I had to move ALL the furniture and books and artwork and memorabilia somewhere else. Just packing up the rocks and elephants occupied Cat for a couple of days. Her back is hurting, so I pushed around all the furniture BY MYSELF. On Wednesday morning, I called the floor guy to find out when he would arrive. "Um, early afternoon," he said. Great, I would just wait for him after lunch.

It was about 1:45 when I realized that we had voicemail. You know, don't you? He couldn't come until the next day at noon. Did I mention that the entertainment center and two couches are stuffed into our kitchen? We can still get to the refrigerator so it's been cereal for breakfast and eating out for dinner. That's my excuse for not posting earlier.

Today (Friday), they got the stain on the floor and the house smells like petroleum distillates. Tomorrow (we fervently hope) will be polyurethane day. Cat and I may just go to a hotel over Easter weekend. If you have observed the weather reports, you will know that snow is predicted for tomorrow. Yes, April snow in West Texas. Tomorrow, before the workers arrive, I will take some photos and post them whenever I can get back to the computer (located in a room on the other side of the living room). Then you will see what I mean.