Well, I’m back to work on the house.  Those 6 months of my knee problem ended in surgery and now I seem to be fine.  I should not have tried to finish a project by over doing it.  I just wanted it done and I paid the price.  Pace yourself.

(Recap) My plan is to do sections of the oak floors at a time so I won’t have to move everything out at the same time.  We’ll live around what I’m doing.  I realize it will take a long time to do it this way but it will be the least intrusive way of doing it.

Today I put on my work knee pads (will always do that now) and got out my small belt sander and lightly sanded the major imperfections off each board in a 4 ft area of the floor in front of our stairway.  The floor was hand stripped already (by me on my hands and knees) but wasn’t totally clean of stripper and a few areas of leftover finish.  My floorboards are uneven and need to be leveled from below but I’m doing that later.  That’s why I’m hand sanding it.  Plus I don’t want to take much off at all, I just want it clean enough to take a stain evenly.  I used 80 grit today and tomorrow I’ll run an orbital sander with 120 grit to finish it.  Then I’ll stain it when dry I’ll coat it with 3 or 4 coats of Waterlox with a day’s drying time in between each coat.  It will probably take one and a half weeks for each section before we can walk on it.  The width of the sections will be just wide enough that we can step over them.   It will save thousands of dollars by doing it myself.

My new year’s resolution is to get my floors refinished.  I had a 5-month delay because of my knee injury.  It is still going to be extremely hard to get down on my knees to work on the floor.  But to push me along I ordered 6 gallons of Waterlox that has arrived and that I will be using for my oak floors.  I plan on doing a small section at a time because I don’t want to block the whole room off.  I’ll rope off a small section that we can step over.  Keeping the cats away is going to be the biggest problem.  It will probably take until late spring to finish if I start now.  Slowly but surely.  The doctor said to be kind to my knees so I’ll take his advice.   Waterlox is so easy to work with, I don’t think I’ll have any problems with doing it in sections.  It levels really good and I’ll just stop the section in line with the boards.  (The reason I’m not renting a sander is because the floor isn’t flat-level yet.  I need to brace a few cracked sub-floor boards from underneath that are letting some of the oak boards sag a bit.  That’s on a later list of “things to do.”)

Weatherstrip, front and back door, check.

I used the spring-bronze weatherstrip and I finally have doors that no longer show daylight around the edges or let cold air in. I’ve tried everything the past 8 years and none of it works as good as this weatherstripping.

It comes in a roll. I bought the flat 1 1/8″ wide weatherstripping by Frost King. One package did one door with very little to spare. You just nail it flat to the side of the door jam with the nail edge towards the inside of the house. Then you get under the side that isn’t nailed and lift it up so it stays away from the door jam a bit. The directions tell you to use a screw driver under it and run it back and forth to lift it out. I ended up using my hands to bend it out a bit. You don’t want to bend it totally, just enough to keep the non-nailed side to stick out enough that it will touch the door when closed. Because there were places on my doors around the door jam that had quite a bit of clearance, I pulled it out so it was sprung about 3/8 inch away from the door jam. When you close the door, it just pushes it back down and touches the door all around. You don’t want too much of a bend because it will cause a noticeable  noise when you open and close the door. Like metal popping. I fixed that by straightening out the bend a bit.

Around the locks and door knob I did some improvising. I saw online that they make something for that area but I didn’t want to mail order it. I just used foam to close off the area. Another problem area was the corners. I ended up cutting them a a 45 degree angle and then just stuck a hunk of foam in the corner to take up any open space.

Maybe it doesn’t look so perfectly neat and tidy but neither did all that foam (it doesn’t last very long) or felt weatherstripping. And who cares if it isn’t perfect if it stops all the wind from coming in and saves money. The door shuts solid now (no rattling!) after I tinkered with it to get the tension just so.

I bought out the 3 packages that were at Home Depot (Lowes didn’t carry it) and will use some on my double-hung windows. The 17 ft roll cost just under $8 at Home Depot.  I don’t know what brand it was but they said it was $9 for the same size roll. Valu Home Centers said they didn’t carry it (at least the 38th Street store in Erie.)

The directions were ridiculous!  Pictures that were so small and without detail that you couldn’t tell what you were suppose to do.  I went on line and looked at as many advertising for the stuff that I could to try and see it better.  It was really hard getting the metal started. The easiest way was with my electric brad nailer to hold the metal end in place. Then I used a hammer and used the nails provided The brads have small heads so I didn’t want to use those for the rest as I was afraid the metal may pull off over the head of the brads over time.

I may run a bead of clear caulk along the nailed edge just to make sure there is no air leakage. I’ll take a little sandpaper to any raw edges where I cut just to make sure they aren’t sharp and bent back the tips of the corners.  There is some drawback with it, though.  I have caught a loose sleeve on an edge that was cut near the deadbolt.  Maybe that is where the store bought stuff for that kind of thing may prove to be important.  If it was one continuous strip that couldn’t happen.
We have had some really windy storms lately and we don’t even hear the wind outside anymore.

I did some research about what life was like and what things happened in the news the year my house was built.

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Below shows some of the items you’d see in 1917.

A 1917 Rolls-Royce pickup truck

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Most houses still used iceboxes. (I’m happy to say we have one of these beauties.)

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The most popular music of 1917. You can see the songs that were published, here. It includes such songs as “Over There.”

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Erie High School Football Team, 1917 Erie, PA

Click on photo for link to enlarged picture and names.

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Erie Academy High School in Erie, PA was started about 1917 but not occupied until September 1920.

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Some fashions 1917

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Here are just some news results below per Brainy History.

January 30 - 1st jazz record recorded (Dark Town Strutters Ball)(released May 31st)

January 31 -Germany notifies U.S. that U-boats will attack neutral merchant ship.

March 23-Tornadoes kill 211 over 4 days in Midwest U.S.

March 26-Stanley Cup: Seattle Metropolitans (PCHA) beat Montreal Canadiens (NHL), 3 games to 1 - Seattle is 1st U.S. team to win Stanley Cup.

April 6-U.S. declares war on Germany, enters World War I.

May 12-43rd Kentucky Derby: Charles Borel on Omar Khayyam wins in 2:04.6

June 8-Walt Disney graduates from Benton High School.

June 28-Raggedy Ann doll invented.

November 1-In WW I, the 1st U.S. soldiers are killed in combat.

November 3- 1st class mail now costs 3 cents per ounce.

November 6-New York state allows women to vote.

November 22-NHL forms with Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Maroons, Toronto Arenas, Ottawa Senators and Quebec Bulldogs; National Hockey Association disbands.

December 19-1st NHL game played on artificial ice (Toronto)

December 26-1st NHL defensemen to score a goal: Toronto Maple Leaf Harry Cameron