Kitchen Project

This floor has never been so clean. Before applying the stain I went over it inch by inch with the shop vac. It took an hour to cross the floor. Then I washed it. Then after that, I went back and shop vac'd it again using the "car" attachment to get under the radiator and under the stove and along the base of the cabinets. I stopped short of actually licking the floor to look for dirt, but I ran my hands across it and if I felt a grain of dust, I shop vac'd the whole thing again.

To my great distress, the laundry room floor looks terrible. I think it's going to have to be tiled over. Years of water damage from having the washing machine there have left the boards with severe discoloration, which wouldn't really be a problem if the severe discoloration extended into the kitchen. but it doesn't.

I'm getting really spoiled by the 1500 watt movie light I've been using in the kitchen while I work on it. When I turn it off and turn the overhead halogens on, it's like being in candle light. I need to figure out a way to completely bathe that place in light if I want to.

I'd never really had much more than ambivalent feelings for the stove. L---- always liked it. It's got five burners, two ovens and two broilers, which is about 240% of what I actually need. If I actually tried to get that in a new stove, I'd be shelling out at least a thousand dollars. This stove is kind of a marvel of Americana. What says "I'm an American" more than having a stove from Sears? Jim and John's idea was to make the stove the lynch pin of the kitchen and put in period 1950's cabinets. I said I'd consider that, but drew the line at collecting novelty cocktail glasses. Jim and John like the 1950's a heck of a lot more than I do. I'm looking for a kitchen that pays homage to the past while planting a foot in the future. Heck, do I sound like some sort of bourgeoisie bohemian moron or what? I'll just stand right up here next to the wall and put this blindfold on, someone please shoot me....

So Wednesday night i get a lamentable look at my life to come. i'm standing in the kitchen, admiring the floor, when one of the cats walks in and tiptoes daintily across the floor like a one pound ballerina. At this moment, a pebble of kitty litter dislodges from between her toes and I flip out: "Dear Sweet Jesus! You're tracking dirt all over the floor!" and chase her out with a broom and murder in my eyes. Hurriedly, I sweep up the speck, wipe it down with a sponge, look meticulously around, eyes darting like those of a drug addled sociopath, for any other mote of dust which might have found itself on my floor. Dear Lord! I see a hair from the varnish brush embedded into the floor where i hadn't noticed it before! Suddenly it begins to pulse like a beacon, i can't remove it because it's under fifty layers of polyurethane. i realize it ruins the whole kitchen. i begin to weep; positive my neighbors can see this hair from their second floor window looking through the cracks in my blinds and will think that i'm some sort of manimal who lives in piles of rags and filth, eating dog food from cans with my fingers. My mind is whirring -- i can cut out this plank of floor tile with a coping saw and replace it, no, wait, i can DRILL it out and then fill the empty place with plastic wood and veneer, the patch might actually enhance the look of the floor. i'm making a todo list in a panic -- in the meantime i block off all the cracks in the blinds so that my neighbors can't possibly see the imperfection in my floor. i drape the kitchen door. hang a sign out front saying that says "QUARANTINE: SARS OUTBREAK TRACED TO THIS SPOT. NO VISITORS." i change my answering machine message to say that, due to massive construction on the premises, i will not be receiving guests but if you leave a message i will be able to meet with you somewhere that is not my house.


I realized that if I was going to keep showing up at Home Despot I'd need some sort of cool uniform, like a Bosh Power Tools t-shirt. That way I could safely buy a $25 Roybi jigsaw and not get laughed at.	I was pleased to see that buying, rather than renting, my random orbit and belt sanders I'd made out like a bandit. I paid $30 each for mine, which is about the 1 day rental price.	This is as close as I could get to a Bosh Power Tools T-shirt. I don't think anybody got it.


So -- floors meticulously sanded all of week five, I'd vowed that this was the last weekend my fridge was going to be in the living room so I started staining on Saturday.	Staining didn't go so badly however, I'd underestimated the amount of yellow already in the wood and the floor came out a lot more orange than I would have liked.	I let the floor dry for ten hours and then midnight on Sunday (after watching Spiderman and Dancer in the Dark and reading 100 pages of The Hunt for Red October) I applied the first coat of polyurethane.


Jim and John came over on Saturday. They convinced me that my 1950's era Sears Kenmore stove was something I should keep.	Tuesday morning. I've been putting a coat of polyurethane down every eight to ten hours for three days. I'm starting to like the floor.	Thursday morning. The floor is actually now beyond my ability to photograph and do justice to it. The polyurethane really looks good.


	Milla will be pleased when things go back to normal. The cats hated being locked upstairs. They wanted desperately to walk on the sticky floor and leave little catfeetprints in the varnish.