Day 77--Refinishing the Floor

I'm still having my doubts about reading The Making of America aloud to the kids. Rachel doesn't want to read it herself because she doesn't need any more Social Studies credits--kind of a stinking attitude, but I can't blame her. I told her that she needs to have a more thorough understanding of the Constitution than she has now, though. The others have time to study the book by themselves during high school, so I'm not worried about them. I just think it's too hard to pay attention while listening to it.  Wilson read it alone and wrote about each section; that worked great for him.

I never realized there were so many ways to just solve for X in a very simple problem. Today, Sarah was reading a story problem and she set up the problem 250 - 100 = X. Fine, but she wanted to add 100 to both sides. I guess I never taught her to combine all the like terms before trying to do anything else. She thinks I'm teaching her something new every single day. It all seems like the same thing to me. I've lost the Pre-Algebra DVD from MathUSee. If I could find it, she could listen to Mr. Demme. Not that she loves that, but I'm sure he's more thorough than I am. How did I teach it to Rachel and Wilson?

We've been working on the wood floor at the other house. We decided to just refinish it. It's so much cheaper than carpeting, and I think it's going to look fabulous! We rented a big sander and sanded it a few days ago, then the kids and I went yesterday to put finishing touches on the sanding. We had to do some with an electric hand sander by the walls and it was lighter in color than the rest, so the kids and I just took sand paper in our hands and blended it in. It didn't blend as well as I would have liked, but it was ok. We're going to paint the steps since it would be a ridiculous pain to use the hand sander on them. It was incredibly dusty. I was amazed at the amount of dust everywhere. I hope we got it all cleaned up, but I have my doubts.

Tomorrow, we're going over to start putting on coats of polyurethane. I think we're going to do four coats. We have to use water-based so I can go back into the house. If we used oil-based, I'd get migraines if I even got near it for months. My parents are having theirs redone too, but they're using oil-based. I wonder how long it will be until I can visit them without getting sick from the smell. Here's a fuzzy little video from yesterday.

See you next week!