My Tribe of ten or less

It's April 3rd already!  I didn't even pull a funny on you guys on April Fools day!

sigh...

It's been crazy around here.  When HASN'T it?!  But especially  now.  

Robb has an essential job and so do I.  But no one else in our household does nor Meri.

So Meri is using this time off from work to redo her house.  She (and I and Shub) (and one other person at first but has since been banished because... COVID...)

Over the last 2 weeks, we have worked our BUTTs off getting rooms painted, trim painted, paint pulled up from the dining room floor, same floor sanded, kitchen refloored with tile and some furniture moved out to Meri's rec room in the garage.

Under the dining room carpeting, Meri found a beautiful but badly damaged linoleum rug.  She did some research on it and apparently they went out of style in the 1950s.  It had paint splotched on it, staples from the carpet padding and normal wear and tear on it.  BUT still one piece, mostly.  

We rolled it up and moved it out to her rec room.  It'll be the floor covering under her couches out there.  perfect.  She had been talking about looking for carpeting for out there anyway.

Underneath was a hard wood floor that Meri was thrilled to find.  

I had remembered the paint stripper that my mom had found for the pews in the 80s.  That stuff was awesome!!!  You paint it on, wait less than 5 minutes and it's bubbling up and able to be wiped away down the bare wood.  I couldn't find anything that potent and asked a few of my sisters to see if they remembered it.  They only remembered that Mom probably got it from Diamond Vogel paint store.  We have one close by!  So I called them.  As soon as the young gal heard that it was a historical question from 1980, she handed it over to an old guy.  He wasn't there in the 80s either but knew of a paint stripper that had to be discontinued as of January 1st of this year due to health problems it was causing.  dang...  I was willing to risk my health that way...  

In the end, this paint stripper didn't work as fast and wasn't as strong, so my hands ached at the end of the two days it took to tackle the whole floor.

I'd like to find some of the old stripper on the black market somewhere to have just in case I want to refinish anything in the future. It was amazing!

Meri stained it two days ago and yesterday morning was concerned about some major streaks and the fact that it wasn't dark enough.  So I helped her stain again.

Since she's anxious about Covid, I've been wearing a face mask and latex gloves for the last two days when I've been over.  She is wanting to protect her little kiddies when she's able to get them back for her daycare, so we're being careful.  

Well, my latex gloves couldn't handle the floor and tore on a couple fingers.

So now two of my fingers look like both my mom's hands did when we refinished those pews.  I'll wear those two fingers with pride...

With any luck, Meri will be able to do the Polyurethane coats today and let it sit for 3 days untouched.  She's living in her req room, kitchen, bath and nap room, that also contains all the beautiful curtains of her house.   

She still has more painting to do to fill her time, so I'm hoping she uses her remaining week productively.  I'm going to stay away just in case.  But I hope she doesn't go nuts all alone.  I've got another pair of latex gloves if she does need me for anything.

Other than that, Leon found out recently that he won't be back to school in April.  Dang.  He's getting stir crazy in the house.  I had been taking him over to Meri's and he was having a great time under one of her trees and playing with sticks. But that's over with for the time being.

The weather had been wonderful the last couple days and if I hadn't been so busy with everything else, I SHOULD have been raking up the yard and getting it ready for an Easter egg hunt.  Maybe this weekend...  It's in the 30s today... Hopefully it'll be above 45 by the time we're able to.

Church has been weird.  Robb has been recording our pastor giving the lessons and sermons, then posting them on Youtube for the congregation to watch.  I've been attending with him and doing my bit of being a good Lutheran with social distancing and sitting in the back row.  It's usually just the two of us and our pastor's wife attending so it's easy to distance ourselves.

Palm Sunday and Holy week will be odd too...  

I can't wait until things are back to a normal of some sort.

I'm currently social distancing myself in my home office as working from the house makes me anxious.  I haven't sewn anything since the three facemasks and since they probably weren't suitable for hospital use, I'm using them myself when I go out.  If I have it, I don't want to be the spreader...

What a crazy world we're living in!