Came across this while looking for a way to remove a small stain from the parquet in the dining room. Hilarious.

http://members.tripod.com/~davee3/Doing%20the%20Floor.htm

“Doing the Floor!”

The carpet in the living room was starting to look really bad. I mean it was so bad I even noticed. I thought we had black carpet with brown spots, then one day I asked the wife where she supposed the people that used to own the house found black carpet.

That’s when I first noticed it was bad, it only took me six years.

Not wanting to spend the bucks for new carpet I was going to try to hold out until spring and sow some grass seed on the old see if it would turn to sod. I was telling a friend my intentions of seeding the living room and he said, “I bet you have hardwood floors under that carpet, pull up a corner and see” There’s one person off my Christmas card list.

I was not going to do it, but the wife overheard the conversation.

So after a few weeks of nagging, I pulled up a corner of the carpet. It was breath taking! Richly stained oak floor, which was beautiful in comparison to the burlap that we were walking on.

So I said “Ok, we’ll pull up the carpet and have the wood floors. The house is going to sound like a canyon, but you’ll get used to it. Leave it for now and on Friday I’ll pull up the rest” Then I left for a meeting. When I returned two hours later, the wife had all the carpet out of the dining room and a mess in my garage. I don’t know why she has a problem doing things on my schedule. I went into the dining area expecting to see a nice wood floor that needed mopped and waxed, a job that should not take her over a hour or so. What I found was the “Pretty wood floor” was only “pretty” around the edges.

Everything else looked like barn wood. In light of this I tried the easiest method of resolving the issue. I told her “ Don’t tear up the rest, wait until we have the money for new carpet”

That weekend my wife and I went camping. While gone, my two sons who never do anything around the house unless they have been severely threatened, and then watched over as they do it, decided to surprise dad, and tore out the rest of the carpet. Dandy!

The rest of the floor was consistence to the dining area, nice on the edges bare wood in the middle. The exception was the area where the previous owners dog used as a toilet, which was spotted with dark stains. I figure seven or eight throw rugs and presto, all covered. However, my wife told my sister in law who suggested we “Re-do it”

There is another person off my Christmas card list.

She said: “All you have to do is rent a sander, sand off all the old varnish then re-stain it, it’s easy” I managed to put it off about six weeks, then one day she decided it was time for her to tackle the project. Now whenever “She” starts a project, I know I’m the one that winds up finishing it. I tried to talk her out of it by saying how rustic the placed looked with bare wood floors, didn’t work.

Friday, she moved the furniture out and dispersed it throughout the rest of the house and garage. I spent the day waiting for her to ask for help and psyching myself up for what was to come. Saturday morning it was time to begin. I learned something Saturday morning. If your wife tries to bribe you into doing a project by saying she will let you have some sex, don’t ask “With who?”

The ride to the hardware store was a quite one. I kept ice on my lip.

We get to the hardware store and head to the stain isle. For a man, this is a ten minute task, pick out the color, grab a brush and whoosh out the door, right? For a man with his wife it is a forty five minute chore. Topping it off, in the middle of her deciding the color of the stain, the poor salesman asked if he could help us. I tried to flag him off and tell him no thanks. Before I could get a word out, the wife was off, giving in-depth details of what we were going to do, and asking for advice. Twenty minutes later my wife took a breath and the guy quickly said: “I think you got everything you need, looks like a plan, have a good day!” And he bolted away, coward.

While standing in check out line, I noticed that the little girl that was behind the register was the girl that used to work at the local quickie mart. For the love of Pete I sometimes don’t know why I even speak, but I tried to make conversation with the wife, and said:

“That little girl used to work at the quickie mart” ”Oh” the wife shot back. “How do you know that? You think she is cute? Would you redo her floors if she let you have sex with her?”

There are questions that demand a immediate answer, no pausing, no hesitating, this was one of them. I hesitated, not good! The wife pushed by me and went on out of the store.

I turned to find that the guy in front of me had moved. I was alone at the counter and “Jenny” had heard the whole thing. She smiled, popped her gum, and started ringing me up. “You redoing your floors?” she asked. “Yes, but I’d rather be having a root canal” She smiled again “I got carpet in my place”.

“Honey don’t flirt with me now, I am having a bad day”

Next stop the rental place.

King Solomon says “A soft word turns away wrath” I have found “No words will keep ones foot out of his mouth.” I learned some more things at the rental place. Like if you rent a sander at 11:30 in the afternoon, and plan on taking it back Monday you pay a extra 50 bucks for it. If you rent it after 2:00 in the afternoon you get Sunday free.

If you go away at 11:30 and come back at twenty minutes to two, you will still pay a extra 50 bucks. I also learned that twenty minutes can seem like eternity in the rental place when your wife keeps picking up sharp tools and glaring at you. Two o’clock came we got the sanders and headed home.

Sanding was not as bad as I thought it would be. However I did learn something: Never tie the extension cord to the short cord of a circular sander so it won’t come unplugged.

If the sander comes unplugged from the wall, ALWAYS turn the switch off before plugging the sander back in. A circular sander turns at 35mph and takes 45 seconds to wind a 100 foot extension cord tightly around itself before popping the plug out of the wall.

The noise from both sanders running made my head ring, but I reckoned the vibration of the walk behind sander must have gave the wife a tickle, cause she was talking to me finally. When I would get close to her she kept saying something about a “Fruiting basket.” I just smiled and kept my nose to the sander.

Sunday was my son’s 21st birthday, so we did not stain the floor. We had a party for him. Then I cleaned the floor, ready for staining on Monday. In light of the mess I had, let alone the one I was in with the wife, I decided to call in Monday and take a vacation day to complete the job. That was the best thing I have done throughout the whole project.

I put on some praise music, and started staining, as soon as everyone had left.

Adequate ventilation to me is in direct proportion to the temperature outside, so the windows were cracked open. By nine o’clock the floor was showing signs of progress, and I was getting a buzz. It was hard for me to believe that I used to take stuff to make me feel like that. After a while though I started having 70’s flashbacks, soon I was jamming on a air guitar to “Shout to the Lord” After that everything was a blur.

I woke up on the landing of the steps with “My Sharona” blasting on the boom box.

My head was pounding, my knees were sore and I had a bruise in a place you would not get bruised while staining a floor. The staining was done, my wife was not talking to me, not a bad day I reckon. Lord and the wife only know what else happened, and I sure am not about to ask. I figure I’ll get up the nerve to ask, in 6 or 8 weeks while I am applying the polyurethane.

My final knowledge derived from this experience is this: When planning to re-stain a hardwood floor always calculate the cost of a large oval rug and several throw rugs into the project.

D.L. Earnhardt III

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2002

Answers

that was great!!! I thought it would be a "joke" and here it was Dale!!!!!!!!

Have you heard about the goat in Florida..it was born when he was killed..and it has a perfect 3 on its side!!

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2002

I just read about that goat yesterday. I sent the article to my sister since her hubby is into racing.

She told me they saw it when they were visiting in Florida last week.

I'm shocked! Shocked I tell ya!

Love the floor story! I'm sending that to her next. LOL

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002

Well, I'm just floored.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002

I don't do hardwood floors. That's what Lowe's rubber-backed carpet is for. I can have the old one pulled up, the floor scrapped, and the new one down in less than three hours for an 11 x 14 room, less moving the furniture in and out. (:

Hey, it's a four-season climate. People around here with bare hardwood floors are either really rich (and keep their houses 80+ degrees in the winter) or don't mind being cold all the time in the winter. Brrrrrrrrr!

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002

The only bare hardwood floor in the house is in the dining room. Some of it is covered by a rug (about 8 x 10) but that leaves a good bit front and back and about four feet on either side. I'm not keen on hardwood floors--unless, like in one of the houses I rented in New Orleans, it's been sealed with marine varnish! I lived in that place for four years, with a young boy, a dog and two cats and those floors looked as good when I moved out as they did when I moved in!

The floors under the wall to wall are oak, and not this modern laminated crap, either. If we were staying here, I'd have them refinished and marine varnished, except for the bedrooms. (There's plenty of insulation under the floor) and I'd use area rugs.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2002

Tile. Space age gel slippers.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2002

I drop things, They break on tile. Unless you mean vinyl tile Maybe.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2002

Vinyl tile? How gauche!

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2002