Covered in dust, stain and paint

Hello! Three weeks have gone without a word from me. We have literally been covered in dust, stain and paint. There have been days when I left our new house and was very careful NOT to touch my hair. I was having a full Marie-Antoinette do with powdered wig (minus the wig, of course). Now my nails are rimmed with floor stain, very attractive look, I say!

When I look at the pictures they totally belittle the amount of work we have done. I think though that we have managed to do a lot in three weeks in addition to a bit of holidaying. Our main achievement has been the floors. The carpets were ripped up and all the century old dirt removed from between the floor boards. That was an amazing amount of gunk; tools we used were the hoover and an old butter knife and then the same knife wrapped in a wet rag. Imagine doing this all over the house!

We continued by caulking the boards with wooden wedges downstairs. It was not difficult, but very time consuming. We had to fit, glue and chisel the wedges. The amount of nails and carpet tags was incredible. I believe that most of them are now removed.

As we decided to stain the downstairs floors, we needed to sand them pretty carefully. A hire machine was needed and used for two days. The upstairs rooms had sanding as well, but not to the same degree, because we decided to paint the floors there as well as the stairs. 

Not done yet, as you see. The downstairs needs two more coats of hard wax oil. We will use the clear, shinier one for the top coats. As our walls will be matt, we felt that the floor would benefit from a bit of lustre.

This is how the Elf Son's room looks sanded. I didn't get more pictures of the sanded floors, just forgot. I didn't want to bring my camera during the sanding as the fine dust might have ended inside the camera.

Our bedroom floor needs one more coat of paint and you can see how I have tried two different shades of white on the walls.

In a previous post I  talked about the smell of one's home. Another  observation that bot Husband and I made was that we felt immediately more at home when we could walk the floors without shoes on. Grounding at home is important for us. We never walk inside our house with shoes on, so doing so felt very alien.  Needs must though, before all the staples and nails were pulled out, it was too dangerous without.

We had also a plumber to remove the ugly gas heater from the living room, change the kitchen radiator and fit a gas connector for our cooker.

I am so excited to start to see some results and will show when there is a bit more to see! Have you done any renovations recently? Leave a link, would love to see.