Staining Strains

I'm not going to lie. I did consider titling this post, "When Twelve Hours of Dry Time Becomes Seventy." The two better angels of my conscience, the Keep it Positive side and the Keep it Real side, had a little face-off, though, and Positive won. Positive definitely took some blows this weekend, so, it's good to see her on the mend.

 Let me set the scene. It was Friday night. The floors had been sanded to within an inch of their lives (see above and below; don't they look like bowling alley floors?) and it was finally time to start gettin' er done. 

Staining is hard work! 

We pushed ourselves, hard, to get the staining done that night. We finally finished up at 11:30pm, at which point a few beers were in order, so we Zombie-walked straight down to the bar. When you've just spent Friday evening on your hands and knees, a beer is precisely what you need. And it was.

And now all our downstairs floors look like this:

Pretty, right? It feels great to have the staining done. The upstairs is done, too, in a darker color. I'll show you that just as soon as I can.

I think I'd mentioned my Crazy Plan for the weekend, which (over-) optimistically involved getting all three coats of clear finish down on top of the stain, as well. Didn't happen.

We came downstairs Saturday morning expecting to see dry floors, and instead saw wet, wet, wet. Sunday, same deal. The fact that it was 58 degrees inside the house, and had rained, non-stop, for the previous week, may have had something to do with that fact. So.

Somewhere, the universe is laughing at us. Can you hear it? 

This evening, after work, we will drive out to the house, and hopefully, hopefully behold dry floors. Coat one of floor finish will happen tonight. 

Fingers crossed.