Bob Villa I am not

So the best thing about being unemployed is drinking coffee in your living room, in your underwear, at 10:32 a.m. on a weekday. What am I doing with all of my free time you ask? Well I began the week by reevaluating everything I hate about our house. Considering that we are now down to one income I then made a chart with the home improvement project categorized in the following manner: home projects that cost money and home projects that don't. Makes sense right?

Number one of things on my list that don't cost money...refinishing the wood on the stairs. Sounds simple. Around 2 in the afternoon on Tuesday I called Joe and asked him where his contractors goggles were. "Why" he asked. "No reason" click. He came home from work Tuesday night to find that I had stripped all of the carpet, carpet pad, carpet tacks, et al. from the center staircase and there in all it's glory were our naked PINE stairs. Obviously not pleased I tried to soften the blow with "you should have seen them before I sanded them. Boy were they a mess!" That didn't help.

I am now in day three of the center hall revamping and waiting for the wood putty to dry (which I guess, in theory, is better than waiting for the paint to dry). I think I may have overdone it with the wood putty stuff. I really wanted the stairs to look smooth and pretty. But being that they are pine, if you think about walking on them they dent. So right now the stairs have more flimsy patches on them than the Bush administration.

Next step is sanding...again...which is a nightmare in and of itself. Who knew dust can travel at such warp speeds?

Here's a cleaner version of our before, that is before our 75 lb. lab had the run of the house for over a year: