Day 125

Productive day! The interior doors and the trim arrived today. Still no exterior side door, though. Mark hung all of the interior doors, minus the missing front closet door, and a few missing basement doors. 

Mark trying out a bedroom door

Doors, workbench, and cabinet pieces

Lots of trim

When he finished with the doors, he got to work helping Brock assemble kitchen cabinets. They worked until after 7 tonight, completed all of the base cabinets, and attached them to the walls. 

Kitchen at the end of the day

While they were assembling cabinets, I was working on staining the floors, a project that Brock had started over the weekend. A little history: while Brock was researching concrete stains, he discovered that some of the pre-mixed stains contain dichromate, a carcinogen that you might have heard of if you saw the movie Erin Brockovich (or if you just know about chemicals and carcinogens, without help from Hollywood). Supposedly, after it is sealed into the concrete with an acrylic sealer, the dichromate is rendered benign, but why take the chance, right? So instead, we're using ferrous sulfate, a non-toxic chemical that's used in fertilizer to make grass green.  Much more peace of mind with that. 

So here is our method: first, wet the floor, then scatter around ferrous sulfate (the consistency of fine pebbles) over the wet surface. Next,  scrub the ferrous sulfate around in the water with a deck brush, until it starts staining the floor. Let it sit until it dries, then repeat: more water, ferrous sulfate, scrubbing, and drying. When the desired color is achieved, it's time to wet it down again, and use a shop-vac to pull up all the water and ferrous sulfate. Then, on to sealing. The acrylic sealer goes into a sprayer; spray it on, dry, repeat. We started upstairs, and although the color is growing on me, it's not exactly what I had envisioned. We're going to look into some other options for making the main level floor a little more brownish. 

Floor-staining paraphernalia 

Laundry room floor, in progress

Stained and sealed master bedroom floor