Day 10 – Monday

Today I buy a better screwdriver. I spend my lunch break at Lowe’s, which is becoming quite the norm. I wander around there. I look for the things on the “discount rack”.

Day 9 – Sunday Evening

I get restless eventually and head over to the house. I try to take the hinges off the cupboards. But I think I need a better screwdriver, cause it’s not working out very well. I look at my hands. They are blistered from sanding. They hurt. I go back to my nice clean apartment and play with my cat.

Day 9 – Sunday Afternoon

Was I supposed to do something today? Oh, yeah. I was going to go back to my new house and work on the cupboards. But it’s like 2 in the afternoon, and my arms and back are sore, and I don’t think I can do anything today. Plus I think I drank too much last night. What the hell? Sundays are supposed to be for rest.

Day 8 – Saturday Evening

I have finished! After about 10 hours of sanding and staining about 845 sq. ft. of hardwood floor, (yes, I can calculate square feet now!) I am pooped. My arms hurt and I have a nasty blister on the palm of my right hand just beneath my pinky finger. Ow. It hurts. But whatever, I got the job done, hit my goal and I did all of this in between doing my laundry at the Regent Square laundry mat (this is the most fabulous laundry mat I’ve ever used) and grabbing a bite at the Square Café. Yeah, now I can go home, shower, and head to the Brillobox to see The Great Ants, a band recommended by the bass player in my band. He says they have a fantastic female drummer.

Day 8 – Saturday Morning

Today, I am going to make an early start. My parents are coming next week to help with the bathroom and painting the cupboards and closets—hooray! So today, I want to re-sand and polyurethane the floor. By sand, I don’t mean I have to get the big sander out again. No, I just have to run sand paper over the floors to make them smooth, and then reapply another coat of polyurethane. I bought something that looks like a broom for which I can attach the sandpaper to, so I don’t have to be on my knees all day. I also bought a tacky rag—it’s this sticky rag thing that one uses to wipe of the sand. They do a very good job of picking up the sand.

I have to get this done today so that tomorrow I can take off all the hinges and handles and put the primer on the cupboards, as my mom told me to do. The primer goes on first before the paint, so I won’t have to use so many coats of paint.

I also have to do my laundry today.

Day 7 -- Friday

I am tired. I took a break from the nastyass cupboards to try to clean the nastyass bathtub. This is second attempt at cleaning the bathtub. I have already used one bottle of SoftScrub with bleach and an entire bottle of plain old bleach. God forgive me for not being "eco-friendly". Plus I used lots of elbow grease. My mother explained to me years ago what elbow grease is. I don't really like to use it, but I'll pull it out if I have to.

Day 6--Thursday

I should mention that over the past three days I’ve made numerous calls to my parents asking when they could come and help again. They said next week. I’m moving in this house in less than 2 weeks. Holy shit.

I'm still trying to clean these nastyass cupboards. If nastyass isn't a word, it should be one.

Day Five (Tuesday): The Lowe's Treasure

I discovered on my lunch break that Lowe’s has awesome sales on random things on two racks in the back of the store. It is here that I found paint for only $4 a gallon. Good paint, too. It was just mixed the wrong color for whomever it was mixed for, I guess. They also have pints for only a $2. I also bought some door handles for the cupboards that I decided I would have to clean instead of paying $2,000 for new ones. What fun! Sales on things I need. Of course, at this point, I need everything. When buying clearance items at Lowe’s, be very careful when you get to the register—they never take off the discount unless you tell them your items are on sale. Then they have to get a manager to override the price. This is annoying if you have a lot of items.

I head over to the house after work and debate what to do about the floors. Then I start cleaning the cupboards. This takes hours and hours. They are filthy. With a capital “F”.

Day Four: Sand between coats!

I have a job and so I had to go to work today. But in the evening I headed right over to my new house to start cleaning. The doors were icky brown overtop white paint. My pet peeve is dirty doors. I hate dirty doors where you can see nasty black fingerprints. And I hate dirty light switches from people’s dirty icky fingers that they either just used to pick their nose or didn’t wash after eating finger food.

I also wanted to check up on my polyurethane job. I hadn’t felt the floors since they had been dry. I kneeled down and swiped my hand across the living room floor. But it didn’t feel nice and smooth, even though they looked nice and shiny. The floors were really very rough to the touch. They would have to be sanded again. My advice: Sand between coats! Always sand between coats!