Gassed Out

Someday, someday, we will end our nomadic existence and finally stop moving around. One might think that owning a house would go a long ways towards that goal. By and large that is true, until a day like this. We are having hardwood floor put into the living room, and the existing floor in the adjacent dining room floor refinished to match. The plan had been to have the wood installed and everything sanded down one day, stain put down early the next so that it could air out all day, then everything sealed up the following day.

Unfortunately, our guy didn't put down the stain until about 4 this afternoon. As a result, the house reaked of volatile organic compounds. We did truly want to use a less hazardous product, but it just wasn't in the cards this go around. We were able to more or less sequester the bedrooms, and thre open the ground floor windows and doors, but it wasn't perfect. We could keep the air in the bedrooms fresh through the night, and thus spare Brynna from a nasty exposure, but it required blowing in cold outside air. That, too, could have worked for the night, but we wanted alternatives. A hotel that would accept Jasper was an option, but a pricey one. We had one more choice: our old apartment. Our lease runs through the end of the year, so we're still paying rent, and hoping mightily that our landlords could find new tenants soon. No luck yet, so it's still ours.

And so, here we are. We just got the last of our stuff out two weeks ago, and yet here we are, back again. We hope very much that this is just for the one night, and the aromas of petroleum byproducts will tomorrow be locked under layers of non-smelly, water-based, no-VOC urethane. After that, we can finally move into and unpack the living and dining rooms, and just maybe begin living in our house, instead of merely occupying it.