Swabbing the Deck

The other day I saw the tell-tale pickup trucks pulling up in front of my neighbor's house.  Large men in sleeveless t-shirts and baseball caps piled out and started setting up saw horses and power tools.  The contractor and his men had arrived.

I often wonder what my life would be like if I handed-off the many tasks of renovating my house to those worthy troops of contractors and sub-contractors who troll fields of the American Homeowner. I'd probably play a lot more with my son and be able to read novels without falling asleep from exhaustion. Or maybe I'd have to work just as much to earn the money needed to pay that army of carpenters, plumbers, and electricians that always seems necessary for even the smallest jobs in my neighborhood.  But enough what-ifs..

Having decided to paint the floor, we chose a color and decided to go with an oil paint.  The clerk at the building supply store informed us that if we were to use a latex, we'd have to rough up the surface and then prime it before painting.  Oil paint would take longer to dry but it would adhere well to the existing paint (most likely oil-based) and would probably wear better than the latex.  Oil paint it was.

Before getting down on my hands and knees with a brush though, I'd have to do a little cleaning.  This old floor has large gaps between the boards that have been collecting dirt and thin objects for more than a century.  I went at these cracks with the saw blade on my multi-tool and began pulling out dirt, hairpins, nails, and even a little necklace that I haven't cleaned up yet but may be gold.  I have my doubts though because I'm pretty sure that the financial status of the inhabitants of Chez Melendy over the years was such that they'd probably work pretty hard at freeing anything of value from a crack in the floor before giving up on it.  I've gutted this house and in the process I've found only treasures of sentimental value, not monetary.

Once the dirt was loosened and the shop vac sucked the cracks clean, I thought it might be a good idea to fill them with something to help prevent their collecting dirt all over again.  I read somewhere that hemp rope worked well for this purpose so I went about shoving rope down into the cracks.  This was time consuming and I started to think I might be creating more problems for myself with all the little strands of hemp that were fraying off the rope pieces as I pushed them in.  I decided to fill the first few cracks and then take a crack a painting to see how the rope took to the paint.  Well, I scrapped the crack-filling. The little rope hairs keep getting in the paint brush and I had to keep picking them out; also it took more paint than I cared to spend to coat the rope. 

One benefit of having the rope in the crack was that it covered any residual dirt that was down there.  When painting near the floor cracks that didn't have rope shoved in them I inevitably picked up small amounts of dust/dirt that would then get painted onto the floor.  I went back and poked and vacuumed them all again and but still had to be careful with the brushwork.

The finished product looked good, perhaps a little more patriotic then necessary but once the baseboard and trim is in place, the pink, white, and blueness of the room will be toned down some.

handyman