The Waiting is the Hardest Part, Really?

 

I thought I'd get your attention with a really sweet picture of my cutie pie. One of my cutie pies (I have two, three if you count my husband). She's much more fun to look at than the umpteenth picture of the basement staircase. 

 And now for the umpteenth shot of the staircase. This is with one topcoat of porch and patio paint. I was getting ready to put on a second coat yesterday when I decided to read the instructions that said, wait 24 hours before applying second coat. 24 HOURS! That's torture.

 And it looks like I'm going to need at least two more coats to hide these stains that came up through one coat of primer and one topcoat. So yeah, I should have applied more primer, but there's no going back now. Or could I put primer in between topcoats? Hmmm, something to think about.

I also noticed a few more holes I have to cover up with wood filler. 

 Here are some scenes from our house this weekend. 

Sanding is not a simple job. Mr. T blocked off the top and bottom of the stairs with paper to keep the dust from getting all over the house. Unfortunately, the paper on the bottom which blocked off the finished basement fell off during the sanding and the entire room was coated with dust. That took us about 2 or more hours to clean up.

 There's my hardworking husband sanding with the round orbit sander. This was a two step process: first he used a coarse grit paper and then a fine grit. There was also vacuuming after each sanding.

 It took a really long time ... he spent several hours on Saturday on the stairs. He's pretty good at sanding by now. He refinished our floors last year. There was a much bigger sander involved in that job though.

 

Here you can see a little test patch where I sanded off he mastic from the linoleum covering. Just to mention again, I had a plumber who was certified in identifying asbestos take a look at the linoleum coverings. No asbestos. Next, I tested for lead with a DIY test kit. It came up negative, but we were still super careful and wore masks and, not so successfully, blocked off the sanding area from the rest of the house. 

 And by the way, I don't think Tom Petty ever pulled up the carpet on his stairs and painted them because waiting is definitely not the hardest part. I wish the waiting was the hardest part. Waiting is really pretty easy, so I'm going to enjoy waiting around this morning (in between doing a few other things). Hope you too have some time to just wait around today.