The cats are out of durance vile

I've mentioned my floor problems several times, I think. The dining room, office-to-be, and hallway aka china room were all covered with nasty brown carpet. I called my floor sander guy in early summer and he gave me a very reasonable bid for removing the carpet and finishing the wood floor underneath. We set a date, and he never showed. He was having personal problems, it turned out, involving a failure of Prozac. He eventually removed the carpet, but after I paid him for that (big mistake, I guess), he disappeared and didn't return my calls.

I looked for another sander, without a lot of luck. (I have lots of friends with horror stories, so I only wanted someone with good recommendations.) I found one place that sounded good, but their bid for the work was over twice what the original guy was going to charge. Then I went to the Anthony Bourdain dinner with lsanderson, who'd had his floors done, and he beamed me the contact info for his floor guy from his Palm to mine.

I called the guy on Thursday, and he showed up the same day and gave me an bid. It was more than the original guy's bid, but much less than the second one I'd tried, and I accepted it. He brought over his machinery the same day, and was at work by Friday.

(Begin feline digression.) I neglected to put the cats in the basement until after they showed, which was a mistake. I was able to catch Pyewacket easily enough, but Gandalf skedaddled and was nowhere to be found. Eventually I gave Rick the sander the go-ahead, and just asked him to be careful when he opened the door. I was panicky that Gandalf had managed to get out, though I was at the same time sure that he hadn't. Eventually Rick went off to lunch, and I started calling Gandalf's name again. I heard a protesting "mew," and discovered that he'd been hiding in my bedroom all along, behind a closed door. I got him to the basement. Later, Rick said that both cats had to be kept away from the utility room, because he had done things to the electrical connections that could be fatal to cats who investigated it. I tried to lock them in the guest bedroom, but Gandalf disappeared into the large unfinished room, and I couldn't get him out. So I made a virtue of necessity and moved Pyewacket and the rest of the cat stuff into the room where Gandalf was. As far as I can tell, Gandalf spent most of the next five days hiding behind the one piece of furniture in the room, a large cabinet, except to eat and use the litterbox. I came down a couple of times a day to pet them and socialize (and apologize), but it wasn't until today that I was able to let them out. (End feline digression.)

Rick the sander worked over the weekend, and finished yesterday (Tuesday). Today I removed the plastic barriers that were keeping me from the area, and walked on the finished floors for the first time. I also let the cats out of durance vile (the basement), where they'd been immured for the past several days. And I finally got to turn the heat back on -- the furnace had been turned off both to reduce the air flow and because the windows were open to deal with the polyurethane fumes.

The floors look great! Rick used oil-based polyurethane, so the floors look lustrous without being too shiny. The repair work looks almost as if it had never been done, and I'm much happier with the quality of this work than I was with the work the original guy did in my old house.

I'm going to give the floors a few days to cure, and then I'll be able to move my bookcases and dining room table back into the dining room (with felt protectors on their feet), and reshelve the boxes of books that have been in my living room for months. And best of all, I'll finally be able to move my desk into the office instead of using the makeshift office in the living room that I've had for the past year.

And then I'll be able to do something about the living room, which is the next big item on the list.

And maybe I'll even have a housewarming party.