Floors are finished

And just like that, the floors are done. It occurs to me that, with the exception of the bathroom—whose time is coming—I have now redone the floors and repainted the walls of every room on the ground floor of this house. It's like I own it!

Yesterday the piano and TV stand were moved to their final locations, the last coats of polyurethane went down, the niche/altar over the fireplace was painted, I switched out another 1930s electrical socket, and I destroyed all but one of our old kitchen cabinets. This morning I moved the phone stand—minus the phone—back to its normal location. I'm pretty sure furniture can be (gently and carefully, all lifting, no sliding) returned to its previous locations. It's been 72 hours since the last coat went down for the main areas of the living room. Hence, it is theoretically possible that tonight I could eat dinner at a table instead of on this thing:

and sit on a couch and watch television, rather than sit on a couch and stare at a still life:

That would be kind of nice. I actually really love the casual "eat lunch over the kitchen sink while distractedly doing something else" for a while—but two weeks is enough.

Let's take a look at that niche/altar that I mentioned, which has its very own electrical socket. Why? WHY? There are so few sockets, and yet one needed to be in the floor of the living room, and one needed to be here. This is original to the house, by the way, not a later addition. What does one do with this? What urgent purpose did it serve in 1930? Clearly you have to plug something in here, but what? I have some ideas, but we'll see if they can be done... Anyway, I'm not certain yellow is its name-o, but it's exceedingly easy to re-paint, so no worries there. I also looked at a kind of celery green, but... nah. Below you can see it in its unpainted state, followed by the new color, and in a distant view, so you have some context for the color (also imagine the big red couch). Finally, note the electrical socket just inside the niche/alcove/altar.

Two tiny things, one that worked, one that didn't. First, the ventilation grates/registers are now painted a beautiful glossy black, and they look fantastic.

So good that it's really sad that two of them will be covered up by the couch!

That combination of glossy black and the warm brown of the hardwoods is pretty sweet. Photo doesn't capture it.

On the not so great front, the wood that I patched the holes in the floor for electrical sockets with didn't really take the stain; nor did the wood putty that is supposed to take a stain. The result is noticeable for the smaller holes, and fairly garish for the larger one. The good news is that the larger hole is covered by a rug normally, and the smaller one is hardly visible, usually being partially under a chair and ottoman.

 

The remaining kitchen cabinets have sat out in the garage for many years now. I was going to do... something with them, but I didn't. So, in truly spectacular heat and humidity, I took them apart with a hammer and a crowbar, and managed to jam two of them into a single, small garbage can. That leaves one left, but perhaps I'll get to that later in the week. Why destroy them? They're old, not particularly nice (although they are, as I can testify, quite well-made), but perhaps mostly because they are were completely filled with mouse droppings. After the kitchen was finished several years ago, we had another spate of mouse invasions, as you may recall, which eventually culminated in the infamous über-Maus (aka, the mouse from NIMH) who destroyed our stove the day before Christmas. Anyway, I wore gloves, eye protection and a respirator for that task, and really felt like I ought to have been in a full-blown Hazmat suit. It was hot. Really unimaginably hot, and humid. I had to tie a handkerchief around my forehead—without sweat would instantly fill my protective goggles, and by the time I was done, my clothes were soaked through. Not just my shirt, mind you, but my pants as well, which I've never had happen before. It was like running a distance race, only hotter and more humid. Anyway, here are our old cabinets, now stuffed into a garbage can:

I got out the grout to redo some of the missing bits in the backsplash, only to discover that it had solidified completely over the years. Back to Home Depot!