Phases Two and Three—and beyond...

I'm not really sure what each of the phases is, except Phase One is definitely sanding. Then there's staining and varnishing, necessarily in that order—but at any point in between, painting or Other Repairs might intervene. In any event, the dining room is getting awfully close to being done. I put down the first coat of varnish Sunday night, and this is the "super-duper-ultra-fast-so-fast-you-won't-believe-it-literally-this stuff-will be dry-BEFORE-you even-put-it-on-the-floor" formula (that means, by the way, "dry enough to look at sideways in 8-10 hours, you can step on it in 24 hours, once, gingerly, while wearing socks, don't even think about putting furniture back in that room for a week"). I put it down shortly before midnight, and it didn't dry by the next morning. At all. Nor by the afternoon. Why?

Perhaps the... 100% humidity? Sunday and Monday were insanely humid, and it's terrible weather for anything that needs to dry. I'm pretty sure the varnish was more wet by Monday morning—when we were enveloped in hot fog (albeit much cooler that the pervious day's high), to give you some idea of the humidity.

Anyway, I put down a second coat, sealed the house, turned on the air conditioning, and went out to the movies. Twice. After Earth and Superman: Man of Steel. For the record, both movies showed some signs of promise (design was very good in After Earth, and casting was great in Man of Steel), and both ended up being pretty bad. After Earth has sections that are so bad, so poorly written and with such stilted dialogue that it's cringeworthy, while Man of Steel has a pretty excellent 90 minute long movie in it, almost entirely ruined by over a hour of continuous, unimaginably tedious explosions. I have seen many otherwise good movies now ruined by the "45 minute long fight sequence" which is generally followed by the "extra 23 minute long fight sequence because we're not sure we courted the young male demographic quite hard enough this time." I actually blame Peter Jackson for both a little bit: his excellent Lord of the Rings convinced everyone—for no reason at all—that epic films needed to be as long as possible, no matter how little story there was, and his wretched T-Rex vs Giant Ape in King Kong also let budding directors know that "it's okay to have fight sequences that never end."

So I rolled back in at midnight—stink mostly gone, and very bearable in the bedroom. Next morning, everything was dry and nice looking. I messed up a few spots trying to get paint preparation done in the dining room before giving up. Overall, it looks amazing.

I'm particularly pleased with the kitchen to dining room transition—although they're two different woods, the color is essentially identical, which is how stain is supposed to work, I guess. Here's  a shot looking straight down at the transition.

If not for the width of the boards and the different grain patterns, you might think they're the same.

I then turned my attention to some OTHER LITTLE THINGS. Like those holes in the floor I mentioned a post ow two ago. Well, I braced from below, filled in the holes, and cut and matched with wood putty, and check it out:

Number one looks pretty great, if I do say so myself. Now, before we celebrate, however, I'm going to tell you now that this didn't work out. It looks great like this, especially the first hole that was cut by a human with a brain (the second, jagged mess was clearly cut by a sub-human without a brain, and can only be made to look so-so). The problem? I didn't stain before setting them in and working in the wood putty. This putty is supposed to accept a stain, but... it doesn't. You'll see pictures tomorrow—it's basically a piece of blindingly white/yellow wood in the middle of brown goodness. The one hole—fortunately the jagged mess—is covered up by a carpet, so it doesn't really matter. I'll see what I can do tomorrow to make this better, but for such a promising start, a bit of disappointment.

I also fixed something that's driven me crazy for years. I replaced all the two prong sockets from 1930 with modern, 3-prong ones so we can stop using "cheaters." They are ugly, clumsy, and don't actually ground your device. Now we have elegant three-prong outlets that... don't actually ground your device. Overall, a huge improvement, however. Jim and Renée came over for a drink. Or two. And then it was time to start the staining. Pictures tomorrow!