White Sauce

So... I've been lazy about posting this weekend because of the heat, but I did actually write posts. So today there are three... Hooray!

The process of filling and sanding is a lot like making Edward Gorey’s white sauce. I putty, then I sand, then I putty, then I sand, then I putty, ad infinitum it seems.  Every time I sand, I find another divot or nail hole that I missed on the previous rounds, which means yet another fill. Yesterday, I thought I’d be painting today, but after the vac/sweep/wipedown, I found approximately three kerjillion new holes that needed filling.

I’m almost out of the wood filler. The sections where I troweled it all over definitely seem to have faired better than the spot patches (curse you, Directions! You win this round, but I’ll be back!). It works well for general smoothing on the floor, but not so great for filling the holes.  I decided today to switch to Bondo and see if that does any better on the small holes.

For those of you who have never worked with Bondo (I hadn’t), it’s a lot like silly putty on steroids. Except that it smells like a demon. I mean really, really bad. I can smell it from the kitchen, which is a floor away, with the doors closed.

Bondo is a two-step process, you mix this crazy red hardening cream with the goo...

 ...and once you’ve got it mixed you have about 2 nanoseconds to apply it. Working as fast as I could to fill in holes I had marked with a pencil for easy finding, it still took me two batches to get most of the floor, and I am pretty sure I missed some.

I’ll be sanding it down soon and we’ll see if it works any better.

In other news, the Shop-Vac gods heard my anguished cries and provided this badboy. The old, quadriplegic version has now been retired to the Garage of Misfit Toys. (Nobody wants a Shop-Vac without wheels!) 

 

 

 

If you think sanding is boring to read about, trust me, doing it is SOOOOO much worse.