Not intended for use...

Update on the floors - as you know from this post, and this one - that we were refinishing the hardwood floors in our living / dining room. Well I haven't updated you since the week of March 28th because this project definitely went awry!

Matt did an excellent job sanding, staining and coating the floors with three coats of polyurethane. We spent the entire week of March 28th staying with my parents while the floors dried and cured. When we moved back in Friday I was beside myself with happiness - they looked amazing!

Those are new baseboards but we need to repaint the walls.

We set straight to work on cleaning the room before we moved the furniture back in - the windows and fireplace were covered in dust and dirt.  As we were cleaning, I noticed that I was scuffing the floor - not scratching the floors, but scuffing them up like the satin polish was coming up. I was wearing my Toms (the most low impact shoes ever) and Matt was wearing socks. We starting to worry that maybe the floors weren't totally dry or cured but Matt immediately tested them and they were.

Matt grabbed the poly can from the porch and started to read. And read. And read some more (there are like hundreds of words of  instruction on the back.) And finally found in tiny print on the bottom of the can:

Not intended for use on floors.

The "floor experts" at Sherwin Williams screwed us. They recommended this product, talked about how amazing it was and it isn't even intended for use on floors!!! I thought Matt was going to throw the can of poly through a window - my husband rarely becomes angry, nor does he ever show it. He had just lost a week of his life, working tirelessly at our home (while missing the opportunity to work and make money that week) and now the floors were a crapshoot.

We called Sherwin Williams and they proceeded to hum and haw over the situation, put us on hold and finally called us back an hour later to tell us that they were "very sorry" but they couldn't refund the product that their floor expert recommended because we used it. They would only give us new poly for free. You can bet your bottom dollar I am going to be writing a serious email to the store and the corporate headquarters about their terrible customer service!

So, slightly defeated, my poor husband picked up his new poly and re-scheduled his work this week so he could re-do the floors... again.  We were hoping that Matt could just sand off the coat of bad poly and leave the stain. Oh the irony... it didn't work. Yesterday, Matt spend almost 12 hours sanding and re staining the floors. It took almost an entire day just to sand them! Today he is putting down the two coats of poly and letting them dry for 48 hours. we'll move back into the house (fingers crossed) by Sunday afternoon.

Many pictures to come in a full post next week.

In the grand scheme of things, this situation isn't that bad. There are much worse things happening in the world. But I feel so bad for my husband. He's such a perfectionist when it comes to his work, and he works until the job gets done. He needs a little vacation. Or maybe a back massage.