We have a shiny floor!

It's done! It can be most accurately called "rustic" -- "distressed" is another good word for it. But hey, that's all the rage now, so I guess we're up with the trends! There are some things I really like about the new floor, like the way the nail holes and other old blemishes turned dark. But I don't really like the way the knotholes turned out. The first kind of wood filler I tried didn't take a stain very well, and it was also hard to sand. The second kind of wood filler I tried worked a lot better -- it took a stain very well. But by then I had already gotten the hard-to-sand wood filler all over. Oh, well. It all adds to the trendy rustic look, right?


This took four coats, and getting it done with the right timing was a little bit tricky. You had to wait at least four hours in between coats, but no more than 12 hours. If you waited more than 12 hours you had to sand the whole works again before you could put down another coat. So I did one coat Friday night, one coat first thing Saturday morning, and another coat Saturday after lunch. Then we went to Menard's to get another gallon of polyurethane so I could put on one more coat Saturday night. That was a lot of bending over! My legs and back are sore. But the floor looks good!

So now it's on to the next project ...

... the stairs. This is also going to take a lot of work. I think I have decided to stain the whole works -- except for the treads and risers, which we'll just protect with polyurethane -- and that means there's a lot of sanding and wood filling to do.


... The trim around this door was Walt's last project before he left. It looks great -- now we just have to decide how to finish it. There will be both varnished and painted trim surfaces in the house, so it really doesn't matter which we do -- we just have to decide.


... My dish-drying shelves arrived from Finland! Pretty speedy delivery, I'd say -- took just nine days. They are a few inches too long -- Mom knew this when she bought them, but it was either too long or too short, and she figured Dave could cut them, which he can. But putting them up is a lower priority at this point. We can do that after we move in. And the plan is to do some cooking over at the old house for a while anyway, while we wait to buy a refrigerator and stove.

Check out all the crazy stamps! It cost Mom €48 to send the package, and I think they added a stamp for every euro. Some are shaped like teardrops. (Click on the photo to see a bigger image.)

... Dave built the little shelf that will go in a wall in the bathroom. It's fine, though Dave says not to put a level on the top shelf. (It's tricky to get much of anything perfectly level in this not-square house.) It's primed so far. I think I'll paint it blue like the rest of the wall.

... Here is a view in the freezer! That's mostly corn you see -- with some zucchini and shredded cheese mixed in. Were talking about doing an apple processing date tomorrow, so it might fill up fast.

... We celebrated Savo Church's 125th anniversary today. There was a good crowd at church, and it was good to see a lot of old faces. I learned some things I didn't know before -- like that the cross in the front of the church was made by one of the members in the 1960s. I also found I missed a number of the people who were no longer there -- my uncle Arnold especially. One of the former pastors mentioned him -- he said he'd been remarking that he'd heard that there's more thinking about God in hospitals per square foot than anywhere else, and he'd asked Arnold if he thought that was true. "Well," Arnold said, "I think more about God in the cab of my tractor than I do anywhere else." I teared up at that. (Arnold probably did too when he said it -- he was like that, especially as he got older, tearing up every now and then.)

Mari and I sang for the program -- we cheated a little and sang two songs we know awfully well and didn't really have to practice. In fact, we'd sung one of them for the 120th celebration five years ago, which we didn't remember until I opened up my hymnal from home and saw the program from the 120th in it, and the page for the hymn marked! Well, it was a time for celebrating old favorites, so I guess it was appropriate.


... One final note: Mari did some modeling for me for Betty's Loft (one of the three Etsy shops I run -- Betty is one of my Mom's friends), and they turned out really well! Betty was very pleased. Check out all the pics here!