You can call me sandy

There's a lot of people out there who get a lot of satisfaction from working with wood. Wood boards. Wood spindles. Wooden Nickels. You name it.

Wood. Wood. Wood.

I got my taste of wood this week.

I also got it in my eyes, my ears, my eyebrows and my nose.

And yes, Virginia of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I did have my OSHA approved mask on and it still got in my nose.

Sawdust, if you're not aware, can crawl right up that little crease of skin below your nose. I'm not sure what you call that crease of skin (doctors in the audience, help me out here) but it's a virtual sawdust funnel.

See, I got this bright idea of fixing up the house a few weeks back and one of my fixes involved putting down good old genuine Montana larch flooring from local mill RBM.

So I conned my brother-in-law into breaking his back putting it in, but it was my job to do the sanding.

In order to sand a floor that size you need a sander the size of a Zamboni. I settled for a beast from the local rental shop that weighed roughly 400 pounds and sort of went about its own business once you plugged it in.

Properly sanding a floor requires several steps, none of which I'll bore you with here because, quite honestly, I don't know what those steps really are. All I know is I sanded, and then swept, and then asked for advice, and then sanded some more and swept some more until I had spent roughly 12 hours of a beautiful day cooped up in a hot house with sawdust working its way up the crack of my butt.

Sand and sweep. Sand and sweep.

I stopped once to have a soda. At supper I had Chinese and then went back to work until well after dark.

After a three hour shower I was no longer considered a fire hazard and I went to bed because day two of the process was the finishing day.

On finishing day you have to vacuum up the whole thing, a process whereby you gain great respect for the ladies that come around and clean your room when you stay at a hotel.

I spent four hours behind a vacuum cleaner. And then I got more advice and the advice said that now I had to go over the entire floor with a slightly dampened cloth again.

The whole thing? I asked.

The whole thing, the advice said.

Then we put on three coats of finish and sometime Sunday morning the whole thing was done.

I learned a lot from the process. Most importantly, I learned it's very nice to be a photographer.

Very, Very, nice.