yesterday

'yesterday' here is used figuratively - as if to say 'in times past'.

when bub, the kids and i moved to our casa linda, we had long lists of projects to complete. some of them have been exactly what we hoped they would be, and i will now tell you of those projects.

when you have a floor in a dining room and kitchen, for example, that is covered with orange shag carpet, your naturaly desire is to what? yes? girl in the red sweater? what would you want to do? --she said change it. shes right. you want to change it.

so what happens when you pull up the carpet and find a loooonnnnggg crack in the cement? you dont want to tile, what if the crack gets bigger and the tile breaks? sure, you could lay wood down, but who budgets for that sort of thing? not us. i say you cover it with paper.

heres what we did: we bought 5 rolls of brown paper (like you would use when shipping a package) 4 gallons of water-based polyurethane.
clean the floor. tear pieces of paper in any shape or size. use the polyurethane as a glue to stick the paper down, then cover the paper to seal it to the floor. we have about 5 coats of poly on our floor and it looks fantastic. (you can get the stuff that dries really fast) this is what you get:





we were so happy with the results that i went out and bought scrap booking paper to try the same thing in the laundry room.
...and we love it.

a word of caution: if you have any small animals or small children,
you might want to lock them in another room. i may or may not have
seen our sweet little kitty using all of her strength to walk across a nearly dry polyurethane-ed floor. shes still mad at me.

oh- and up-keep is simple - add a coat or two of poly each year to keep your floor looking fresh and new. it cleans up with a broom and a damp rag. easy peasy.