Sanding

We have cypress wood floors in a portion of the house that have looked pretty sad for several years. We've been putting off refinishing them because it's the area where the dogs live and the polyurethane has to sit for several days without traffic to cure properly. We were getting ready to go on vacation last month and I decided to rent a sander and try and get the floors done right before we left so it could cure while the dogs were in the kennel. 

I did ample research online and watched many videos on YouTube on floor refinishing and felt ready to try my hand at it. The rental store guy said the square footage we had to finish would take about 4 hours so we rented the sander for a day thinking that would give us plenty of time. 

I got it home and started sanding at about 10 am. By 1 pm it looked like I had barely touched the floor. I was going through sanding pads like crazy and the old polyurethane was gumming up each one in record time. The old coating had ambered over time and the orange color was very difficult to remove. By the first day I had gone through all of the coarse sanding pads the rental place had given us and I was about to throw in the towel. The floor was sanded in areas and barely touched in others. It was so frustrating!

 

 

Sean got off of work and begrudgingly came to help (he was more than happy to say this was my project but was a huge help). I went in the next morning and got more sanding pads from the rental place and rented the sander for another day. We spent the whole day trading off hand sanding the edges and using the floor sander. The air conditioning had to be turned off so the dust wouldn't spread throughout the whole house. It was hot! 

 

 

All in all it took about 20 hours of sanding, and we probably could have gone longer but had to return the sander so we could leave for our trip. Talk about a miserable job. We decided there are things in life that you pay a professional to do and this is one of them. When I returned the sander to the rental store I was telling the guy there about our long sanding process and he said every floor is different....some people can whip through their sanding job in just a few hours and 3-4 sanding pads while other need it for days and use 30 pads (I think we used 28 on less than 400 square feet). I'm not sure what polyurethane the last people used on the  floors but it was more like resin. 

 

We vacuumed like crazy, took the dogs to the kennel and then I put down three coats of a water based polyurethane finishing up around 1am. I've never been so happy to leave on vacation in my life. Very grateful that job is done! 

 

Birthday Boy

 Wesley celebrated his 14th birthday over the summer. The kid is growing up! I'm very proud of the young man he's becoming. 

My parents, Jessica and her kids and Matthew were there to help him celebrate. Happy birthday Wesley!

The hat has now survived for 14 years. 

Colorful Garden

 I really love growing stuff. I suffer through the winters because I'd so much rather be outside tending a garden in the sunshine. This year I focused on veggies that my family regularly eat instead of the novelty crops like spaghetti squash that I had 15 of last year. I also planted a huge row of giant sunflowers and several rows of zinnias. I've noticed higher yields on years where lots of flowers were planted in the garden. They bring so many beneficial pollinators to the garden. 

Here is the early stages in May after I mulched it. Not much to see here.

These were taken early August. 

We've got a ton of tomatoes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, baby watermelons, basil, green beans and sweet corn. The baby asparagus are looking good, maybe next year I can harvest some. We've had to deal with corn thieves this year for the first time. I think it's raccoons as I saw a family of them near our house last week. They pull the ears off of the stalk and pull away the husk and eat every last kernel on the ear before throwing on the ground and moving to the next one. 

 

We moved the chicken A-Frame house over to the garden since they were demolishing the grass where ever they were positioned in the yard. This way they can work up the soil and leave their droppings, enriching new soil for the garden next year. 

 

I let the 4 batams out in the mornings to hunt for bugs while I'm in the garden.

Omaha Zoo Chair Lift

Omaha Trip

 My sister and I decided to have a girls/cousins weekend and met in Omaha. They have a spectacular zoo, one of the highest rated zoos in the country and it was time to check it out. A friend of my sister also said to check out the safari park right outside of town. She said it was not to be missed. We met at the Wildlife Safari Park in Ashland and piled into her minivan to enjoy the drive through park. It was sure fun to see many animals up by the road. They have a parking area about half way through the park where you can get out and walk to many exhibits, get a drink and cool off. The kids really enjoyed it, glad we went. 

The next morning we got up and had a wonderful breakfast and headed to the Henry Doorly Zoo in downtown Omaha. It was a huge zoo that would have taken a few days to see it entirely. We hit the major points and then took a sky lift to go over the parts we would miss. I think the lift was the best part of the zoo! It was 20 minutes and very relaxing. I'm glad we went and would highly recommend the zoo.

Kids got some good hotel pool time in too.

Wesley's Activites

Wesley had a great 8th grade year and is looking forward to starting high school in the fall. He's in a few activities including Scholars Bowl, karate and band. We are so proud of him! He was accepted into the elite singing group in the high school this fall. Really excited to see what they do. Here is a clip from the variety show.

He's been having fun in karate, moving up the ranks slowly. He's currently a yellow belt. Part of the requirements to belt test is participating in a tournament each year. Last weekend he took part in the fun tournament. It's for kids under 16 and low stress. I think he enjoyed it!