So we FINALLY finished "refinishing" the hardwood floors, and they look much, much better than they did before (if I do say so myself!) They are by no means perfect, we learned the hard way that even though it's tempting, you should always, always go with the grain when using a belt sander!
I have to say though, I think the hardest part (physically) was staining the floor - all that crawling around on your hands and knees and trying not to stain yourself into a corner - so fun!
Once we were done with the hardwoods, we moved onto ripping out all of the carpet and pad on the main and upper floors. It's not really the carpet removal that's bad, it's all those pesky staples and all of the dust that gets really annoying.
On Friday night, we were working at the house and both feeling a little overwhelmed, when our awesome friends the Hagens showed up with their kids around 10pm or so at our doorstep to say hi. They were on their way home from something and wanted to see how it was going.
Their visit totally cheered us up, and after they left to go home and put the kids to bed, Eric and I were talking about how grateful we are for the awesome friends and family we have (my Dad was home babysitting our kids so we could work late) and how we wanted to be better friends and family members.
About 15 minutes later, Sean was back on at our house with his work clothes on asking where he should start working! Mind you, Sean just had DOUBLE knee surgery 3 weeks ago and had no business doing this type of work, but it was pointless trying to stop him. And of course, Sean wouldn't leave until Eric did - that's just the kind of guy he is. We want to be like him when we grow up!

Unfortuneatly, the guys didn't find out until after midnight (Sean texted his friend in construction) that there's actually a special tool that carpenters use to just scrap all of this stuff out of the floor. But I'm sure they still had fun crawling around and ripping them out with pliers one-by-one. Good times!

