sanding down the floor

It's just another little project grown all out of proportion. Zelda was building shelves in her room on her day off, and Gven was helping her put up the brackets. When I saw the room all cleared out, I got the bright idea to do something with the old, uneven, painted brown plank floor. They weren't opposed to it, so I jumped in.

The next day I rented a flat sander from the hardware store and began my sanding education. See, you got your belt sander, your rotary sander, your drum sander, and your flat sander. Depending on which expert is giving advice, you might want one or another. Not knowing any better, I thought I was looking for a belt sander, but the first expert convinced me that the drum sander would be better suited to the job of doing an entire floor. You stand upright and push it like a vacuum cleaner, he said, with the sanding surface turning on a roller. Sounds good.

When I went to pick it up, however, the second expert talked me out of the drum sander, so I ended up with a flat sander, which is also upright but moves from side to side, so there's less risk of gouging a furrow in the floor. Sounds even better.

I take it home, move stuff around upstairs, and the machine - a long handle attached to a hexagonal motor housing that rides on top of a plate on top of a pad on top of an 18-inch sheet of coarse sandpaper - works pretty well. At least it made a difference, while kicking up a cloud of hundred-year-old brown, probably lead, paint.

So I opened the windows and skylights, donned a handkerchief over my face so I looked like a cowboy, or a bank robber, or a Berber herdsman, and guided the sander around half of the first room, learning as I go and sweeping up a lot of fine brown dust. After sanding one room and sweeping up quantities of dust, I took a shower and called it a night.

The next day I was up bright and early around noon and got right to it - after a trip to far-off Morrow County to look at a house. Why? Because it was there, and it's available, it looked interesting, it's in great shape, it actually has enough space for us and two or three additional Gollys or Gollyfriends, and it sits on almost two wooded acres, and in short, there's no way in hell we will ever move that far out of town, but it can't hurt to look.

But I digress, which is the point of the story, and consequently I don't get back on the sander until well into the afternoon, sanding, sweeping, and moving stuff around in the second upstairs room: sand, sweep, move stuff, cough up nasty gunk. Repeat. There was, I admit, a certain sense of accomplishment. I clearly recall feeling like I was getting something worthwhile done.

There was a light rain falling outside, not enough to rain in the open windows or skylights, thank goodness, and the ventilation through the two little rooms helped a great deal. Time was passing, however, and I had rented the sander for 24 hours, much of which I had already squandered on sleep and fatuous pipedreams of a house in the country with two llamas in the yard, life used to be so hard, while I was supposed to be improving the condition of this quaint old slouching, charming, off-center house.

The phone rang, but I kept doing what I was doing, and during my next break I returned the call, and it was a friend in another state, telling me she had been admitted to the MFA program she had applied to, so we talked for a while, not a long time, but a while, about school and work and writing and making ends meet, and especially about not knowing what's going to happen or even what we want to happen. That open-endedness, which I think is what Kant called "purposiveness without a purpose," is a difficult and wonderful thing if you can get inside it.

So I'm glad I had that conversation, and still the clock is ticking, so I returned to the sander as three o'clock became five o'clock, and in spite of my six o'clock deadline I decided to press on regardless and go over both rooms one more time for good measure. Sand, sweep, move stuff around, go outside, cough, spit. Repeat.

By now I've shredded two sheets of coarse sandpaper, and I'm on the second sheet of medium, and there appears a point of diminishing returns where more flat sanding is not making as much impact, so I pack it in and return the machine to the store a little after eight o'clock. Expert number two is there again, and he doesn't charge me for the overtime. Alright.

The minimal, okay, let's be frank, the half-assed dropcloth I had draped over Z's bed and clothes didn't do much good, and despite my efforts there is dust everywhere in Zelda's room and the adjacent upstairs room. I spent the next day, Sunday, doing other things and breathing normal air downstairs, while Gven and Zelda toiled upstairs, finishing their shelving project - remember the shelving project that started this mess? - and wiping down every surface of every object in both rooms, no doubt breathing their share of fine brown lead-infused dust in the process.

When I did go upstairs, the floor looked a little better, felt a little smoother, but was not transformed and renewed as I foolishly thought it would be after a good sanding. So maybe I should have gone with the drum sander after all, risking gouges in the hundred-year-old planks in order to make more of an impact. Yes, if I had it to do over again (and I might), knowing what I know now, I would do that, but I don't know what the unintended consequences of that would be.