Our story so far: A couple of coats of clear polyurethane was all we needed to show off the wood floors in the master suite and on the second floor of the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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In the sanctuary-slash-great-room, we had a lot going on already. Between the ceiling beams, the fireplace and the kitchen cabinets, the floor played only a supporting role. Plus, its rustic patina didn’t need any more attention being called to it. So we went with a driftwood stain that had a hint of green in it; this would tone down the red in the Douglas fir planks creating a neutral backdrop.

Now after days of sanding, we would be spending days applying stain and polyurethane. The hardest part about this was enduring the odor. Do you remember what the school hallways smelled like on the day the janitors applied vanish to the gymnasium floors? Sort of a pungent chemical stench crossed with a tobacco barn? The church stunk to high heaven, but it lasted only a day or two. Tyler’s obsession with industrial sized fans played in our favor here. He threw open the doors of the church and invited the fresh summer air in.

A feud between Minwax and Home Depot over which Big Box retailer could have exclusivity on the Minwax brand proved to be a windfall for us. One day when Tyler was renting a floor sander yet again, he spied an endcap display offering polyurethane for half price. He bought every last can.

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Tomorrow: How we paid tribute to history with the Hall of History floor. Read about it here. And you might be pleased to learn it’s the last installment of Chapter 32 about sanding floors.

Our story so far: After sanding floors for months at the old Methodist church, we spent a little time filling the seams.

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Our next hurdle was stain. Fortunately, choosing a stain color proved to be much easier than choosing paint colors for the trim and walls. We decided to go without stain on the maple in the master suite and on the pine on the second floor. A couple of coats of clear polyurethane was all we needed to show off the hardwood.

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Tomorrow: Luck equals preparation plus opportunity. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We spent one hot, sawdusty Saturday morning sanding the second floor of the old church we were turning into our home.

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After our showers, we were so exhausted we fell back into bed (we got up early, remember) and napped. It was one of those glorious naps during which you sleep so hard that when you wake, you are still paralyzed with slumber. I just lay there for a few minutes savoring my job-well-done accomplishment. Tyler roused, and we determined a late lunch at the nearby Mexican joint would solve our hunger problem most quickly. It was as I attempted to get out of bed that I realized my lower back ached. Not a little I-know-I-worked-hard-today ache, but a big I-think-I’ve-hurt-myself ache.

“Oh, my back hurts,” I said.

“Oh, my back always hurts,” my compassionate husband said.

I was able to get out of bed, get dressed with some trouble and make it to the Mexican joint for lunch, but I couldn’t bend over or babysit for a week because I didn’t trust myself to be able to pick up my granddaughter. My husband quickly realized I was not suffering from any run-of-the-mill back pain and handled sanding duties solo for a long while after that. It took three weeks for my back to return to normal operation. I determined it wasn’t actually the work of sanding that hurt my back but the effort of lifting the super-heavy industrial sander up the steps. This underscored the safety reminder every manual laborer since the age of Doan’s Pills learns: Lift with the legs, not the back.

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Tomorrow: The price of sandpaper. Read about it here.

Our story so far: My husband and I got up early one Saturday in June to “eat our vegetables first.” We figured we could sand floors on the second floor of the old church for four hours, then enjoy the rest of the day. But we were stymied by a long breakfast and quickly rising temperatures.

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The center of the floor was in pretty good shape after the previous sandings, but the edges were thick with mastic. No sooner would I install a new sanding disk on my edger than it would be gummed up with glue, unable to remove any more layers. Up to retrieve another disk, then down on my knees to install it and proceed a few more inches along the edge of the floor.

No sound can be heard above the buzz of one sander let alone two. So there was no music, no conversation, only attention to detail.

I took as few breaks as possible, besides the disk replacement, with the intention of finishing the edges upstairs and then tackling the Hall of History and the mud room on the main floor before having to return the sanders. But I ran out of sanding disks before I got downstairs. And Tyler ran out of energy.

Still, we had to drag the sanders down the stairs, blow clean the devices, hoist them into the truck and haul them back to the rental desk by 11:30. All in the searing high-noon heat and humidity. The pancakes and eggs we had during our extra-long breakfast break provided just enough fuel to meet our deadline. As we climbed back into the truck, Tyler said, “where to for lunch?”

Tyler had no shame, apparently, but we looked a fright. Sweaty, covered in sawdust, my hair all askew from wearing a ventilator and ear muffs all morning.

“I’m not going anywhere for lunch,” I said. “I’m going home to take a shower!”

Tyler obliged my vanity, and I indulged in the best shower of my entire life.

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Tomorrow: Mexican with a side of aspirin. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We had 2,200 square feet of hardwood to refinish in the 126-year-old Methodist church we were turning into our dream home.

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We’d pretty much agreed, Tyler and I, that we’d do something other than work on the church on weekends—shopping, chores, socializing, resting—but the pressure of finishing the floors began to eat away at our best intentions. We couldn’t install cabinets until we finished the floors, and we couldn’t install countertops until we had cabinets, and we couldn’t have sinks until we had countertops, and we couldn’t have running water until we had sinks.

So one Saturday morning in June, I agreed to sand floors for four hours. If we returned the sander within four hours, we paid less than using it all day. It seemed a good way to get an unappealing chore out of the way first and then enjoy the rest of the day. Plus, we figured to be done before the hottest temperatures of the day, predicted to be in the nineties.

So we got out of bed at 5:30 a.m. and rewarded ourselves with breakfast out. Only the diner we settled on was a cook short and experiencing problems with its electronic ordering system. A thirty-minute treat turned into seventy-five minutes of Chinese water torture. So we didn’t get the sanders rented and into service until eight o’clock.

We donned ventilators, safety glasses and ear protection. Tyler used the orbital sander on the second floor, and I used the edger. The sander had so much power and I so little core strength, I could only control it by leaving one knee on the ground and using the other leg and both arms to propel it in the direction I wanted it to go. I probably looked like some sort of middle-aged spider trying to control a panicked fly.

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Tomorrow: Which has higher priority? Hunger or vanity? Read about the dilemma here.

Our story so far: The first step in sanding hardwood floors in the church we were turning into our home required a drum sander and 24-grit sandpaper.

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Have you ever seen 24-grit sandpaper? I hadn’t. I’d only used the relatively even sheets of sandpaper to smooth edges and surfaces on furniture I painted. How cute. Twenty-four-grit sandpaper is the wicked sumo wrestler of finishing materials—it looked like it had gravel on it and if you got in its way, you’d be flattened.

At this point, I used a floor edger to sand right up to the walls in the sanctuary; this step required the operator to kneel, and since I still had my natural joints, I was elected. Then someone (usually Tyler, but sometimes St. Johnny) used the orbital sander with 60-grit sandpaper going with the grain.

On ordinary wood floors, one might be finished sanding. But we didn’t have ordinary wood floors; we had 126-year-old wood floors. Over the course of a century, the floor had settled everywhere except where the beams in the basement supported the structure. This left narrow grooves in the sanctuary floor that remained untouched by the stand-up sanders. Seated on a rolling flat cart low to the floor, Tyler used a belt sander and a hand-held oscillating sander to smooth out those grooves.

Final pass was with an orbital sander and 80-grit sandpaper.

Of course, vacuuming was required after each sanding step.

And that was just the sanctuary floor. We had to do the whole thing all over again in the master suite (with maple flooring, which is much harder than pine), in the Hall of History and on the second floor. In total, we had about 2,200 square feet of hardwood to finish.

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Tomorrow: Sanding the second floor. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Sanding hardwood floors in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home was dirty work.

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Sanding hardwood is hard work. To the elbow grease, add a flurry of sawdust and you’ve got good reason to hire out the work.

But we didn’t. We hired out the duct work, we hired out the electrical, we hired out the plumbing, we hired out the drywall and we hired out the painting. Unlike those other tasks, sanding didn’t require any particular expertise, only numerous trips to the Big Box rental desk, attention to detail and a willingness to endure dust (a lot of dust). It’s the job you often see novices attempt on DIY Network’s “First Time Flippers”; viewers see about ninety seconds of effort, even though the rehabbers probably spent weeks doing the work. Though the investment in time is big, the investment in cash is small, and the return is potentially huge. Everyone likes the sound of “original wood floors.”

And so, we found ourselves sanding floors in the old church during cold days in February and hot days in June.

Fundamentally, sanding is granular demolition and despite labeling it the “flooring phase,” the truth of the matter was we were still demoing the flooring seven months after we purchased the old Methodist church to turn into our home. The layers of flooring and gunk covering the original wood floors were beginning to feel as if they would never end. During the official demo phase we peeled back the old carpeting and padding that was two decades old if it was a day. Then there were the thousands of carpet staples and hundreds of nails covering every square foot of the sanctuary.

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Tomorrow: Oh, you can’t sand yet. Look out for the tin! Check it out here.