Me: Hello Mr. Floor Refinisher, I’d like to get a price on refinishing these floors.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Which floors?
Me: The pine in the living room, the maple in the foyer and the oak in the dining room.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: I see you’ve revealed some pine under the foyer floor.
Me: Yes. I can’t decide whether to go down as far as the pine. It’s a dilemma.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Well if you do, you might as well go down to the pine in the dining room too.
Me: Huh??!!!!
And that is where this particular story began. An innocent enough call to a local floor refinisher which subsequently had me Googling DIY recipes for Ativan.
I’d asked him to give me a price on sanding the 3 different floors on the main floor of my house. You may remember (because it was only a week ago), I discovered an original pine floor under the maple floor which was under a new pine floor in my foyer. You can read about that fiasco here.
When Mr. Floor Refinisher walked around my house inspecting the floors to see how they’d react to another sanding he squatted down in the dining room and declared the oak flooring had probably been sanded by a DIYer because it was uneven and had sanding marks all over it.
He told me the oak in the dining room *might* not be able to be sanded again. It was already very close to the level of the tongue and groove. He could try to sand it but because it was so thin, the wood might splinter and break apart.
That’s when he pulled out my heat register, looked inside it and said that pine was running under the dining room too.
Oh shit.
Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.
Why would he tell me that? I mean why would he say out loud, ever so casually that “there’s pine under those floors“?
This poor guy obviously had no idea the meltdown that sentence would lead to.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: So, I’m not sure I’d recommend the pine either because it …
Me: WAIT. STOP, HOLD ON. SHUT UP AND STOP TALKING. THERE’S PINE UNDER **THIS** FLOOR???
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Well, yeah. I thought you’d know that.
Me: No. I did not know that. THAT IS NOT SOMETHING I KNEW.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Are you O.K.? You’re twitching. You weren’t twitching when I walked in. Did your eyeball just fall out?? Listen, I’ll get back to you with a price, I should be going …
Me: STOP RIGHT THERE. O.K. Hold on. Don’t you move. You’re telling me there’s pine under this floor like the pine in the foyer and the living room. How do you know that? I mean just because it’s over there under the heat register doesn’t mean it’s through this whole room does it? This house is old, it’s been added onto, things are wonky, there could be anything under this dining room floor.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Well yeah, there’s probably a lot of bugs under it.
Me: We need to rip some of this floor out. Now. Right now. I’m going to rip it out right now so you need to get out of my way. Do you think I can just smash it?? I’m going to just smash it. With an axe. There’s an axe in the backyard. Can you Google if there’s any way I can make my own Ativan?
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Yup. I’m sure your eyeball just fell out. That’s it rolling under the dining room table right now. It has cat hair on it.
Me: Whatever. I need to rip this floor up now so – if you could just …
Mr. Floor Refinisher: I can take up a piece if you like right now. Then we can see if it runs the whole length of the dining room.
Me: Do you want to use my axe?
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Thanks very kind of you to offer, but no, I have my own way.
Me: O.K. But I have an axe. It might be faster.
Mr. Floor Refinisher: Done. Take a look and see what you think.
And here I’ve sat for the past 4 days. Unmoving. Holding a piece of oak flooring, searching fruiltlessly for my hair covered eyeball under the dining room table.
Still no decision. But I’m leaning towards a simple mixture of aspirin, catnip and cough syrup.
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