My Accidental High

Well folks, the poly on the floors has been applied and it's looking marvelous, hooray!!!!

Saturday morning we broke out the Fabulon to seal the floors

When we sealed the kitchen floors we used a Minwax poly and we thought it sucked, so we tried Fabulon which Chris had heard good things about.

Our lambswool applicator was too big for the paint tray

So of course we used a spare organizing tub and lined it with plastic and poured in the Fabulon

Worked like a charm!

Then it was just a matter of applying the poly. I used a brush for oil-based paints to apply it around the perimeter of the room and in all the narrow nooks and crannies that the lambswool wouldn't be able to get at

And Chris used the lambswool applicator and started from the front of the room and moved his way back

It took about 45-60 minutes and when it was done the floor looked like lacquer

And I started acting like an idiot.

Because we're very responsible renovators we used a heavy chemical in the house without using our masks, and while the smell and fumes didn't seem to cause Chris much discomfort, I got a roaring headache, felt a little nauseous and felt pretty dumb as well. Why people sniff glue I have no idea because I felt like I couldn't form a complete sentence and it was not pleasant.

We spent the rest of the day outside and then up at my dad and Wendy's and returned home to a house that didn't smell horrible that night (we left a few windows open and brought the fan inside to help blow the air out).

The Fabulon requires a 24 hour wait between coats, so late Sunday afternoon we returned inside for round 2. This time, with masks. First, we screened the area with 100 grit to sand out any minor imperfections, and then we moved around the room to look for any places that needed a bit more sanding (a stray hair or piece of dust)

Then we just repeated the application process for round 2: I moved around the room with the brush while Chris applied with the lambswool.

We also set up the plastic zip walls again and taped plastic down to try to keep out the smell from the living area of our house. We closed off the doors to the office from the hallway (the office and front room are connected) and put a towel under the door to keep the smell away from the rest of the house. Then, we left the laundry room door open to the backyard and set up the fan so that hopefully the air got blown out the front room, through the office and out the laundry room back door. It seemed like a pretty successful negative air set-up as you can see the air being sucked out of the front room from the pull of the plastic

The second time around I was a lot less high. I guess using your masks and properly ventilating really does wonders... :)

Earlier this morning I went to see how things were looking 36 hours later and the floors look great!

Yay!!!! (and that photo is a pretty good representation of the stain color.)

It's glossy and beautiful (we used a semi-gloss finish)

Chris walked around in the room last night to inspect how things were looking, but we'll hold off on moving anything substantial in for another week or so to really let the poly cure. I'm so glad the flooring adventure has finally ended successfully! Hooray!!!!