Although there are a lot of new low-VOC or no-VOC wood floor stains out there, there are very few homeowners or flooring contractors whom actually use these products. Green floor products are expensive + no flooring contractor will work with an unfamiliar stain. -It’s just too much of a liability for them. I actually found one contractor who has worked with a green stain, but their estimate for the job was twice as expensive as the average quote. Our options to refinish our floors ended up like this:

1. Do all the work ourselves.

• Rent a drum and edge sander from Home Depot + sand the floors ourselves = no cost factor, but a lot of labor.
• Obtain samples and test stains on floors.
• Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).

2. Do part of the work + hire a contractor.

• Hire a flooring contractor to sand and buff the floors in preparation to stain = no labor for us, but a high cost factor.
• Obtain samples and test stains on floors ourselves.
• Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).

3. Hire a contractor to do all the work.

• Due to our budget and time frame, we went this route of  hiring a contractor who stained our floors in Royal Mahagony = a fair cost factor with a harsh impact on the environment.
• Unfortunately this is a common solution for most people.

For those of you who want to explore, here is a list of low-VOC or no-VOC wood flooring finishes:

And just for jealousy’s sake: Baseco is a Swedish company that carries a gorgeous wood flooring line.

Excavation and pouring of cement is a grueling laborious effort and I don’t envy the crew who is doing the work for us. Sam at Urban Construction, Inc. is handling the job for us. He doesn’t have a website so here is his contact information:

Urban Construction, Inc.
Contact: Sam
5151 Foster Avenue
Chicago, IL 60630
(773) 895-9415

One of the pre-existing conditions of our house when we bought it was the horrible condition of the garage. The previous owner used it as a storage space which resulted in a family of very happy rats to move in. Amazingly they chewed through the concrete floor and plaster walls.

Here is a list of how we are cleaning up the garage:

• Exterminate the rats from the garage, yard and alley.
• Remove the previous owners crap from the garage.
• Replace the garbage cans with new ones (did I mention that the rats chewed these up too).
• Called the City of Chicago for a request to spray for rats in the alleyway.
• Breakup existing concrete floor of the garage, haul away, build up with gravel to be above grade (did I mention that our garage was below grade = flooding from the alley), pour new concrete floor, patch plaster walls.
• Install a new garage door (old one is going to fall off any day now).
• The roof is not pitched so it has become sunken and will need replacing.

Valentine’s Day in the morning and truffles the night before.

We celebrated my g-ma’s 88th and cousin’s 21st birthdays over dim sum, then spent the rest of the day sanding the living room walls.