Wax On, Wax Off ... Er, Poly On, Sand Off?

The thing I love about weekends when you are in your "late early years," is that home improvement projects and cleaning house are the excitement of our weekends; and making it to midnight before crashing on the sofa watching Food Network?  Well, that is a feat in itself.

I don't even know...

What I do know is teenagers bother me now and top 40 music is obnoxious.  

Let's get back to the excitement, shall we?

This weekend me and Shane spent a good part of our time having a contact high from the poly fumes. This stuff ain't for the birds, folks.  Open a window, maybe.

I know I mentioned before that hopefully the next photo submitted would be a picture of a complete basement.  Well, with 90 hours of total drying time it didn't happen.  Plus, we are too eager to show off the results!  We apologize in advance for our poor iPhone quality photos.

For starters, we went with the Minwax stain in Expresso.  It look about a quart or so to do our floors.  I am a huge fan of Minwax anything because we've never had a problem with it, which is kind of a big deal for us, and an even more rare occurrence.  

After the stain was applied we ended up picking up this stuff:  

... and it's smell is lethal.  If you have kids, I would recommend an all-weekend pool party at a hotel while your house airs out.  Hooray for chlorine in your eyeballs!

We ended up doing three coats of poly.  The trick is to do one coat, wait four hours for drying time, give it a light sanding--clean up, apply the second coat, wait four hours, do a light sanding-- clean up, and finish off with a third coat, allowing the final coat of poly to cure for 74 hours before light use.  Three coats of poly or more are recommended for any floor.  Because this room won't be getting as much use as others, we spared ourselves and stuck with three.  At four coats, we would have officially hated life.

**Tip: We used large foam brushes, but held them like sponges instead of paint brushes.  There is a huge difference in the amount of time you take doing one versus the other.  Trust us.

We still have yet to install new closet doors, trim, and do some paint touch-up's.  But the floor?  We can call it good.  High fives all around!

After zero coats of poly:

After three coats of poly:

The wood looks lighter in some areas, but we assure you it is the iPhone quality photo.

It's got a nice little sheen to it without it being overly glossy.  Hopefully the NEXT photos will be the final photos, and that the update will come sooner rather then later?  Until then.