Nothing Else Matters (Except Varathaning the Floors)

With the wedding only a few weeks out and the wall out of the way, Mom and I turned out attention to the store’s floor. Once the wall was gone there was a very visible break in the finished floor by the stairs and the floor of the store. From what we can gather, the store’s wood floors were never finished like the rest of the floors in the house were. The plan, prep and varathane and hope it flows well with the area by the stairs.

Then there was the sinking feeling we got once we started cleaning it. It started with a rag and some vinegar water. Then moved to detergent and a scrub brush…then we moved on to a chore boy and detergent. Between the two of us we went over the same spot of floor half a dozen times and we were still getting grime off of it. Honestly, it’s amazing how much filth can get ingrained in wood. Hehe, you see what I did there, ingrained? Funny right? Right?…no? …Okay. Moving on…

So, while I was attacking the floors with wire brushes, Mom was over by the counters with a razor blade, scraping layers and layers of grime off the floors. I’m serious, it had topography. And of course, once she finished scraping that off, she brought out the sander.

As I mentioned before, varathaning was our ultimate goal, but before you can do that, the surface has to be clean and sanded. Eventually we gave up on the cleaning and sanded the grime off because it was the only thing that really worked. Mom took that little sander and did the entire store floor.

Then, it was time. Two brushes, two buckets letting off noxious fumes, and two of us against the store. I think a good way to descibe our experience was the phrase uttered about halfway through our day. “Well, could be worse, we could have to do this sober.”

The varathane was a very strong smell to be surrounded by.

It took us several hours but we finally neared the end of our first day, and our first coat.

Did I mention it needed at least two coats? (It’s really supposed to have three but we didn’t have the time…Future us!) Ah well, that’s what the next day was for.

So two days of hand painting and almost a week of drying later, our floors went from this…

To this.

Now that the floors are done and we’re two weeks out from the wedding, decorating can begin…

Tulle. Fixes. Everything.