'Autumn Fire,' or 'Unmitigated Disaster'

It has been a stressful week or two. Between packing up our apartment and trying to get the farmhouse ready, there have been numerous challenges, but the good news is that we are finally in! That's right; tonight will be our first night in our new home. But wait, you may say, wasn't that supposed to happen last weekend? Yes, yes it was.

So here is what happened to mess up our best laid plans.

Wednesday: Threw out my back while packing. I lay on the floor all day while my wonderful husband and in-laws packed up all our furniture and took it to New Castle.

Thursday: Chiropractor realigned everything from my neck to pelvis. Was at least able to walk around. Many thanks to my mom-in-law for taking me to get myself taken care of and helping me to clean the apartment.

Friday: Brother and sister in law helped me finish packing and cleaning. Locked the apartment and said goodbye to Pittsburgh.

Last weekend: finished sanding all of the upstairs floors with the help of Mark and Sophia. Started staining/polyurethaning the floors, and then we ran into more trouble.

Dan and I decided to stain the upstairs floors a much lighter shade than we did downstairs. We wanted the bedrooms to have a lighter look to them, so we bought this stuff:

It's a nice light color, we said. It will bring out the grain in the wood, we thought. All lies. We tested it on the old wood in the bedroom, and this is what happened.

Seriously? 

Come on! That wasn't supposed to happen! The 150 year old pine flooring turned a reddish/orange color with the "natural" stain. Bugger. The patched sections of floor stood out like a sore thumb. 

Master Bedroom with the patched chimney hole.

We probably should have called it quits at this point - forget the stain and go right for the polyurethane- but we didn't. I stained every floor upstairs, and they all turned out like this. They don't make a stain to match this...whatever color. I shall call this color "Autumn Fire" or "Unmitigated Disaster;" I haven't decided which yet. I was pretty mad, but there wasn't a darn thing I could do. I needed a stain that would be close in color to this one (for the new wood), so I pulled the kindergarten card and started mixing stain colors hoping to get something that would be close.

Bam and Bazinga, I win. 

Here are the before and after shots of our upstairs rooms.

Spare Bedroom 1 before sanding

Spare Bedroom 1 after sanding

Spare Bedroom 1 after "natural" stain and 2 coats of polyurethane

Master Bedroom before sanding

Master Bedroom after three weekends of sanding

Master Bedroom after "natural" stain, mixing and matching 

stain to use on the new wood patch, and 2 coats of 

polyurethane.

Spare Bedroom 2 - half old pine and half new pine. I was really 

worried about getting this room matched well.

It's not a perfect match by any means, but I'll take it. I probably

should have done two coats of the mixed stain on the new wood, but

we were running out of time to get these done.

Hallway - all new pine

Mixed stain and polyurethane - not too shabby!

Overall, I'm satisfied with the colors. It's definitely not what we expected, but we'll work with it. Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, our floors refused to dry for three days (yay humidity), so we haven't been able to move our bed or dressers upstairs. We've been staying at my in-law's house this week, and Dan has been commuting back and forth to work. It's been stressful to say the least. Looks like we will be able to stay in the house tonight though, and we're pretty excited to finally get settled and take care of this mess. 

Other random notes: 

We have a lovely chandelier hanging in our stairwell now. Daniel is very proud of getting it up there, so I thought I'd post a photo of it.

We have a kitten in residence :) His name is Tigon and he lives in the garage currently. Dan is really allergic to cats, but he agreed to an outdoor cat that occasionally gets indoor privileges. He is cute, loves to chew on cords and really likes to perch on shoulders.

Dan and I will be taking a break from working on the house for the next few weeks. We're both exhausted, and could use some time to settle. We'll pick up posting probably before Thanksgiving. 

Happy post-Halloween to everyone! Enjoy the candy sales :)