Finally!

The floor guy sanded and sealed and applied 3 coats of polyurethane (low VOC of course) and finally he is done! The floor has been drying since about noon today, I left all the windows open. Hopefully tonight we can start putting some furniture back into where it's supposed to go.

My next move is to clean. I have so much cleaning to do before we start moving stuff around, even though we sealed off the kitchen, it still got really dusty from the sanding. Once I can clean the kitchen and living/dining rooms, I can move everything back and empty out the baby's room in preparation for the "nesting".

I am still finishing up little pieces, just received the pull out shelf which will keep the garbage can under the cabinet and that will complete the kitchen setup. We were procrastinating with that but now it will be nice to have trash in one of the cabinets instead of a trash can in the middle of the kitchen. That also repurposes the garbage can to becoming the diaper pail (a-ha!)

The floor looks great - the guy did a good job repairing all the areas we had torn up during the renovation and also the vestibule (which we had carved out from the bathroom) It's not an exact match to the parquet but the parquet is 100 years old (he thinks) so it's going to be impossible anyway. He also installed a saddle from the wood to the kitchen where there was a treacherous lip before. I think overall it looks nice and I can say now, the major renovation for this house is officially done!

We still have to do bedrooms but it would be installing a pocket door and stripping moulding, and sanding the floors again but there's no demo or anything. Which means the major expense is done (and what an expense it was!) I have been keeping a budget and the total is about $35k so far - $15k on bathroom and $15k on kitchen and the remainder on everything else. I think it's money well spent and more importantly, now that the baby is coming, we won't have any more large cash outflow except for the baby.

In a way, we have timed it well. I paid off the car just before we bought the house and now we've finished the major reno just before the baby came. Now if only the baby would just go to college next year and I can buy myself a new tv!