Under the Gun…

We are now definitely under the gun. We have found a couple to rent our condo starting in mid-April. We have been hoping to rent to someone we know – it takes the uncertainty out of finding a good renter online. An opportunity to rent to a co-worker’s son arose last week and we jumped at the chance. We met with the son and his girlfriend on Saturday and they have agreed to rent the condo for a year. Now, before they move in, we have to completely remodel both condo bathrooms, fix some odds and ends, and clean everything (including the carpet).

Our house move in date is now March 27. This means that in the next three weeks we need to have the floors finished, kitchen cabinets installed, appliances and countertops ordered, clean at least a few rooms, and pack everything at the condo. We have so much to do!

Our kitchen cabinets are complete and ready to be delivered but because the floors aren’t finished I had them hold the cabinets and they will be delivered on March 19. This gives us less than two weeks to patch, sand, stain, and polyurethane almost 2000 sq. ft. of floor – yikes! More on the floor later…

In order to help with the time crunch, my parents stopped by on their way back from vacation to pick up Tucker. He will stay with them until we move into the house – it will definitely help to have extra time that we would have spent on walks! Our bosses have also agreed to let us work compressed schedules for the next few weeks (either 4-10 hour days or 4-9 hour days with 4 hours on Friday). It will help to have that extra day or half day to get work done!

Now, for the work we completed this week – it was almost all floor related! Chris has been focusing on finishing up the patching of the floor. He finished the dining room, the foyer, and the hallway. Most of the patching has been very difficult with fitting new boards in between old boards. They always seem to shift during the repair process. He is doing a great job though!



On Thursday, Chris removed the bad floor boards in the master bedroom. There was a lot more to remove than we had expected. Some of the subfloor boards were bad and we had to remove those too. This is the last bit of patching we need to complete.



Saturday we arrived to find that the exhaust from the boiler fell apart again. The two elbows and connecting duct were laying on the floor and the exhaust was spewing noxious gasses into the house. Chris turned off the boiler and made the repairs on Sunday. Hopefully this summer we can replace this system.

I have been working mostly on preparing the floors for upcoming work. This included cutting out and laying tar paper, screwing down subfloor boards, applying wood filler to holes and installing plugs to cover screw heads.


This weekend we rented a couple sanders from ABC rental. One is a small radiator sander and the other is a large 4-head random orbital sander. I spent almost all of the weekend using the large sander. Last night I was able to sand under all of the radiators so that we could take back the sander early and save some money. I was able to completely finish sanding the den (36, 60, and 80 grit). Yesterday afternoon I started sanding in the dining room (with 20 grit) and was only able to remove the top layers of finish – fortunately the finish on this floor is much thicker than the others.