Fixing up the house for company

So we are going to have company next weeked for the baby shower. We had already worked ourselves to exhaustion over last weekend at the rent house. Yet I have still been able to find the energy to work on our house. I set up a daily plan of what I was hoping to do. So far I've been pretty efficient. I've cleaned all the blinds and shutters, dusted frames and shelves, and thrown out clutter. Last night was the funniest of all. I decided that while Tyler built the shelf that goes over the curtain holder I would move the furniture and clean the wood floors. Since we put the floor protector things on the bottom of each foot of furniture it makes moving things around pretty easy. So I was doing all that and having a great time knowing I was getting it done. I vaccuumed all of the dust first then dry mopped the left over dirt. However I was quite content that the floor were clean so I decided to mop with wood floor cleaner. That wasn't difficult at all. But then Tyler told me that since I mopped with floor with cleaner now I needed to seal it. This is when the work and craziness began. He had purchased polyurethane to seal the floors. I'm not sure what I was thinking but I really thought I could do the work. We opened the can and the fumes weren't bad but after about 1 minute I realized I couldn't be around them. So Tyler can to the rescue and began sealing the floor. At that moment I realized how far he was going to go and knew I had to move the furniture onto the tile in the kitchen. I hustled to keep up with him while being careful to not scratch the floor or hurt myself. I got all of the furniture on the tile floor within minutes and then realized I couldn't get to the dishwasher, coffee maker or cups for drinks. But the real surprise came to me when I realized we had to wait 8 - 10 hours for the polyurethane to dry before we could put the furniture back on. For some reason I figured an hour or two tops. So then I began to rearrange the furniture in the kitchen so I could get to the things we would use that night and the next morning. That wasn't too hard.

After about 10 minutes I began to feel a bit weird and went outside for some fresh air. Then I realized that we had not opened the windows in the room to vent the fumes. Since we couldn't get to the SunRoom windows or the windows in the living room from inside the house due to furniture and the floor being wet I had to think of another way to vent the house. Thankfully when we first moved in we put locks on the SunRoom doors that you can unlock from the outside. I could get to those from the gate but the light on the side of the house was out and I couldn't see a thing and our flashlight was stuck behind the furniture. So I carefully made my way down the easement, opened the gate and unlocked the door without a light. I opened all of the windows. Then I thought maybe I can crawl over the furniture in the kitchen and avoid walking back in the dark. That was not possible but at that time I had stepped on the newly sealed floor with my right shoe. I knew this because when I tried to move my foot was stuck. When I looked down there was dirt that is now trapped in the sealant. I didn't really want to tell Tyler since he had worked so hard and I really thought I could just wipe it away. Ha Ha Ha.....nothing comes off Polyurethane! I made my way through the dark again and began to clean the kitchen as much as possible which debating on if I should tell Tyler that I had messed up his work. Before long I knew that he would figure it out because he always does and decided to tell him. He just laughed it off and said that we can sand that part down and reseal it again.

Then I was beginning to become really tired. I thought that maybe I should go over to Mom's for the night and sleep vs staying in our house. But it seemed as though the fumes were becoming weaker. I went to our room and Tyler put towels below the doors to prevent any fumes from leaking in. We opened the windows in our room to bring in fresh air and I figured that should be pretty good. About an hour later my head began to hurt really bad so I got up to go outside. This was about 10pm when Tyler said that we should go for a ride. So we got in the car and drove around for 30 minutes which gave me plenty of time to get rid of the headache. He had realized that I had been in the house too long and needed at least 30 minutes to be ok. Again I didn't feel to smart after all of this. However I was able to get to sleep while Tyler cleaned up the remainder of the mess and then we woke to thunderstorms at 2am and had to close the windows so the rain wouldn't mess up the work.

To say the least it was a very long night and we still have a hallway to seal and room to paint this weekend. But after it is done we won't have to worry about it again!