A Tale of Refinishing Floors

The floors in the house are awful. I can't get them clean from the years of neglect they've had. They are an ok shade of oak, but there's water damage and dirt ground in. The last project that I'm insisting we finish before we move in this week is to get the floors refinished. Yesterday we rented a sander and then I spent the next 10 hours sanding the 750 square feet of wood on the second floor. By hour 7 I wanted to fall asleep on the spot and my hands were starting to go tingly. But we eventually got them all done. The floors aren't prefect, but we aren't aiming for perfection, just much better. That has been our mantra today as spent hours cleaning all the saw dust up and then staining the floors. Shaun wanted a dark stain and I was going for something closer to the color of the playroom floors. I thought I would go for a compromise and thought I got something in the middle. Turns out the stain was a fairly dark cherry color. The picture on the can is very misleading. But even though it's probably 5 shades darker then what I wanted, I think I'm really going to like it. Even better, it completely covers the water damage in the back room and the years of ground in dirt in the living room. I'm not sure even how our furniture is going to match, but it's stained and done and tomorrow I'll have pictures and the first coat of polyurethane down. And it's on schedule to be done before we move everything in.