Sanding party

On Sunday the 21st, we should have been ready to go. We'd carefully calculated that the sanding process should take exactly 3 hours and 40 minutes, leaving just enough time to return the tools without incurring Home Depot's hefty 24-hour rental fee. We were so sure of this that J didn't bother getting to the store until 3:30, four and a half hours before their stated closing time.

Upon arriving, however, he learned that Home Depot had done some calculations of their own: they had determined that by closing at 7:00, they could screw us over. Royally. Fortunately, they had left a loophole: tools rented just before closing time could be returned the next morning at no additional cost!

With 14 hours of tool rental secured, it was time to get this sanding party started right.

With vacuuming.

After getting the first (of many) layers of dirt off the floor, it was time for a deep clean.

P manned the drum sander. Imagine a vacuum cleaner hooked up to a jackhammer and leashed to a badly-trained 100-pound St. Bernard and you have the right idea. His hands were numb after the first two passes over the floor, and at that point the process was less than half complete.

The results were pretty spectacular, though.

Before and after the battery acid spill. (No, that was actually in another room.)

J followed in P's wake with the edger. Upon burning out a fresh sanding disk on the first room, he realized that he needed to change his technique. Other indicators included major lower back pain and almost total paralysis. J consulted the edging masters of YouTube to discover the hidden secrets of edging artistry locked within him.

Halo effects courtesy of sawdust.

We'll attempt to distill this wisdom into two bullet points:

• Do not apply additional pressure to the sander. (Whoops.)
• Do not lift the wheels off the ground while operating the device. (Totally did that.)

We realized that there was no possible way all the sanding could be completed by the next morning, especially given J's incapacitation. P stayed up until midnight going over the entire floor again with 100 grit sandpaper so the drum sander could be returned within our "four hour" window. We'd have to bite the bullet and shell out $10 to keep the edger for an additional day.

The edging was finished the next afternoon. It was time for another round of vacuuming, and then a well-deserved rest.

It took 13 hours to get to this point.