Sunday Fun and Games!
Yesterday was my Saturday to work, so we got a slow start. L spent the morning mowing the lawn. The old water heater has now been mowed around once. YIKES, we're more redneck every day!
Menards' sale of the week is a coupon for 10% off EVERYTHING in the store. Only one coupon per address can be used, so we spent the afternoon making a shopping list for today. We want to buy everything that doesn't ordinarily go on sale, like trim, stain, screws, and hardwood shelf material. We also finished figuring how our plywood floor sheets would fit on the floor. We want FULL sheets to lay across the soft spots and patched areas. Plus we don't want large seams running along the main traffic paths of the room. We also need to have the seams butt together on the floor joists. LOTS of figuring and measuring, but we came up with a plan that SHOULD work. Four more sheets of plywood should do the trick.
We don't have a garage, so we have to run our table saw outside. It rained all afternoon yesterday, so it was a good day for figuring. Hopefully the coming week will be nice so I can start to cut, stain, and polyurethane the trim. In case anybody's interested, I've found the world's greatest poly for furniture and trim. It's Minwax's Rub On Polyurethane. You rub it on with a rag(I use old socks), eliminating all the little bubbles you get from applying poly with a brush. This means that you don't need to sand between coats. Two coats of this product gives you a durable(washable), satin finish, that gives you the look of hand rubbed wood. As long as I'm giving advice, don't EVER use the all in one poly/stain products! Yes, you save time, but you don't get a nice even coat of stain. With the poly in the stain, you can't wipe off the excess like you can with regular stain, and you wind up with a blotchy looking project. When dealing with the expense of real wood, take my advice and apply your stain the old-fashioned way.
Our water heater is STILL leak free; HEEEHAW!!
It's sunny and clear outside, so I'd better finish the laundry and get cracking on our project!
posted by tshsmom @ 7:35 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
That's good advice - thanks for the tip about the poly. I've bought unfinished furniture before and sanded, stained, and protected it. I did this to my son's dresser, then when he was in early grade school, he decided to take a SHARPIE and label his drawers - on the outside. He still has the dresser with his drawers labeled "PANT", "SHRT", "DRWER". I never did get around to stripping it down and starting over. :-P
It's Minwax's Rub On Polyurethane
Oh man, I love the smell of that stuff. It's so...toxic smelling in a GOOD way. It's amazing on minor scatches and blemishes on coffee tables (when you have kids, it works miracles). Glad to see you are still in good spirits!
No garage? They don't have garages in Minnesota? ;p
Wish they had basements here in California. Well, actually I don't. A basement's the absolute worst place to hide from zombies.
What's Menard's? I've never seen one of those stores. Is that a hardware store or a fix-it-up store like Home Depot, Orchard Supply, or Lowe's?
A garage is another one of those projects that we haven't gotten around to, after 19 yrs. In order to build a garage, we have to cut a bunch of trees and brush AND grub out the stumps.
Menards is like Home Depot. It's the only home improvement place we have in town; other than the 2 expensive, local lumber yards that won't let you handpick your lumber. FORGET THAT!
i don't have a garage either. it's rare in nyc and the surrounding areas. a comment about your redneck post: when the Husband and i were in the midst of renovating our brownstone, we filled our entire back yard (about 800 square feet) with rubbish before we called sanitation in to remove it. it was even 7 feet high. we called ourselves the block rednecks. we laughed, but i don't thing our neighbors were amused! oh well!
You definitely out-rednecked us, Ann!
I'm sure the skills you have honed in sewing helped you solve the plywood problem. Almost every man I have seen attempt to learn to sew gave up double-quick. If men are supposed to be better at math and spaial relations, and women at verbal skills, why have men historically been orators and women homemakers? You can't cook and sew without both formal and intuitive math!
It's funny that you would say this, Sage. That's exactly how I plan our carpentry projects. I lay the plan out just like a sewing project. Framework is seam allowances and plywood is my "material". I NEVER plan flooring based on sq. ft. I plan it out like I'm laying out a pattern. I usually have floor tiles figured right to the tile.
My husband is terrible about visualizing a project, so I do all the planning and he carries it out.
I've been using a LOT of cooking and carpentry for Z's math classes lately.
I'm just trying to get a few more things in order before the next wave in September -- roof, bathroom and kitchen remodels, outside stone fence. THEN maybe I'll take it easy.
Jason, you've got some MAJOR projects going on there!
Did you take some "before" pictures, so you can remember what it used to look like?
I really enjoy your blog. Thanks for stopping by mine earlier today and at other times too!
BTW, what area of MN do you live? Most of my relatives live in the southwest corner of MN/northwest corner of IA.
*Whew* Glad to hear the water heater's still holding! LOL about mowing around the one in the yard.
I admire your ability to do all of this work you're doing on your house. I'm still in the whining, 'I can't do THAT!' stage. *sigh* The bathroom has taken us 6 years and we're still not done.
What happened to all of the handy men? My husband is not handy. When I was a kid all of my friend's fathers (and mine) could do anything - wiring, studding and drywalling, plumbing, mechanics...Too bad he never thought to teach his girls how to do it all.
Nic, we live in northern MN. My family is originally from the Rochester area.
Monicar, I was an only child so I was my Dad's son and my Mom's daughter. My husband didn't know his father so I taught him what I know. The rest of it, we learned together through trial and error.
Yup, the pics are already prepped for the scrapbook!
What is Menard's?
Honestly, you guys have more department store chains down there than you can shake a stick at! I'm always dumbfounded when I go to the States. We have like three up here, not including Wal-Mart.
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