Ow.

I hurt.

Today my brother helped me sand the floors of the new store. Since floor resurfacing runs about $4,000 for a space my size I took his advice to rent the gear from Home Depot and spend a day sanding and finishing the floor.

Well, one out of two ain't all bad.

We met at Home Depot around 8:30, got the Drum sander, as well as an edging sander. Sandpaper for the same, as well as floor coating and the like. We took the stuff out to Manayunk, only to find we had left the drum sanding belts back at Home Depot. So James drove back down to South Philly, picked them up, while I tried to get stuff out of the way and take off some of the quarter moon molding from the wall bases. We started on the second floor, and the sheer thickness of the multiple layers of the old floor coatings, as well as the uneven surface of the older floors meant that the 60 grit sandpaper wasn't going to cut it. So Jim drove back down to the Home Depot again while I did a bit more work as much as I could. By the time he got back it was almost noon, and little had been done to show for it.

But we got started; its a slow laborious process where the drum sander strips a section about 6-8" wide on each pass, sometimes a second pass is needed as well. This takes time, and you should do passes in coarse sandpaper (to get the stuff up), one medium sandpaper (to get out the rough points) and one in finer sandpaper (to clean up completely). All the while we were fighting the uneven surface and resistant coats. The edges are done using the 'edge sander' which is another word for 'uncontrolled mechanical beast that weighs a ton and will give you massive back trouble'. Seriously, if I never use one of those machines ever again it will be too soon.The drum sander was better to operate but was no prize for ease of use since you were fighting it and it shook your hands a whole lot as well.

But we got the 2nd floor done in the middle afternoon and went down to start the work on the 1st floor. We realized that we weren't going to get around to any coating that day. So we concentrated on what we could do, which was get the sanding done so we could return the machine to Home Depot.

The first floor was easier, but a much larger area to work with. It took us the until around 7 PM to finish, and we actually skipped the fine sanding. We were both exhausted and beat by the machines. Once done, we packed everything up into Jim's car and drove ... to Home Depot.

We were both coating in sawdust, and despite wearing masks could taste the dust. I had a nice sickly grey pallor from the film of dust all over me.

Tomorrow, I will try to start the coating process. This requires vacuuming, the mopping, then mopping again, then finally putting stain on the floor. Some sanding may be needed, but I will be using the belt sander for touch areas that the drum and edge sander couldn't get.

Tired now.