Monday, September 25, 2006

A date night and floor sealing...

Tim and I went out on Saturday night. Sebastian has been a little whiney and my life-saving mom called me on Saturday morning and asked me if I wanted her to watch the kids so we could go out for awhile. You know I hadn't even thought of going out. I was just about braindead from Sebastian screaming most of Saturday morning. When my mom asked me, it was like I heard angels in heaven! LOL! Okay, not really angels, but you get the idea. We went to our favorite boring place to eat - Farmer's Kitchen. Doesn't that sound boring? Seriously, we are usually the only 30 something people in there, but they have good food. You can't pass up good food. Then we went to return some stuff at Home Depot. We then bought some tile/floor sealer at Home Depot and made our way across the street to Lowes. Doesn't this sound like an exciting date? I know, but really this is what we enjoy doing. We returned some stuff to Lowes. Tim is always buying too much of whatever he is needing for a project - so we usually have a return spree at some point. Tim went to leave the store immediately after the return! What? No shopping, no browsing? How can that be? Aha! He admitted he was avoiding being sucked into yet another house project! I quietly said I just needed him to help me pick paint colors for the living room/dining room/kitchen - but he in no way had to paint if he didn't want to. He gave in and went and picked paint colors. He even picked colors I really like. We didn't buy paint. We aren't ready for that yet. Read on... Finally we went over to Borders. I really prefer Barnes and Nobles, but Borders is in the same mall. We didn't have a whole lot of time left, so we went with the closer one. I looked at all the scrapbook magazines I could find and he looked at fish books. Typical for us. Usually, we get dessert, but I am trying so hard to stay on task with Sparkpeople. I opted for a little single truffle for the road. It was a nice date night and I even got floor sealer to boot! Next... Well the next day I started scrubbing our tile like crazy - oh - we have UNGLAZED ceramic tile. I don't know if you all know anything about UNGLAZED ceramic tile. I will give you the quick lesson. Unglazed tile soaks in dirt into all the grooves. It is unbearable to keep clean. I have a floormate, I have a mop, I have a me on my hands and knees scrubbing and poof it is still dirty 10 minutes after you clean it. I, recently, by chance found that of all things, softscrub works wonders on it. I cleaned one day, every stinking square and my floor looked so great. Then, POOF, it was dirty the next day. I wanted to cry! Tim had talked about sealing it before, but now I felt like I might lose my mind if we didn't seal it now. I couldn't go back to the way is was before and I in no way had the time to clean every square with softscrub. Okay, I am scrubbing the tile to ready it for sealing. Tim had a long list of things he wanted to get done that day and none of them were my floor. I was fine with that. I figured I would do what I could, when I could and eventually the whole floor would get sealed. Then Tim came in and started scrubbing. He does so much better than I do and so much faster. Then Savannah came in and she started scrubbing. I know this doesn't sound like a perfect family moment, but it was. I was so happy to have them both helping me. Of course, I had to stop and take care of Sebastian here and there. Tim finished up the scrubbing and started sealing. He got the first coat on and then I did the second coat later on. After the kids went to bed, we did the third coat. So far it is only the kitchen and the dining room, but it looks so nice in there. I am so holding my breath that this is going to make me like my floor. Now you need the story about why we have been PUNISHED with this tile. For those of you who don't know, we bought this house from my mom. She had actually had this tile installed before we bought the house. She and I went shopping for tile all around. I don't remember why, but I remember I was tired of looking for tile. I was at the point where I just wanted her to pick something - anything. She showed me the tile we now have. I said something like that would be fine. Great, get it, etc. I don't remember. I know I didn't really think of it as someday I will be living with this tile for a very long time. On Tim's side of the punishment - my mom paid her neighbor to install the tile. Now Tim was very capable of doing this job for my mom, but he didn't really want to. As we were scrubbing like crazy, Tim and I started to joke about how "What Goes Around, Comes Around". If you ever have to help somebody pick out tile or if you have the skill to do the job for them, please, please take my advice and think of it as your own house! Otherwise, you too, may have to live with ugly tile for 7 years like I have had to live with. Oh and this probably won't be the last you hear of the tile saga. I plan to work through the rest of the tile area over the next week or two. Tim told me he would help me with the whole living room, but I am going to do the entryway, hallway, etc. You will be so sick of my tile stories... but, don't lose hope because hopefully my tile stories will then turn to painting stories.

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