Stripping Hardwood Floors In North Minneapolis

Photo By John Hoff


Realtor and historic house preservationist Connie Nompelis offered me a labor exchange, to be paid in the indefinite future, if I would spend my weekend helping her strip floors. How can I refuse? It's not like an UGLY woman was asking me.

Connie owns a few houses...I think she once told me "four and a half." Two of them are right next to each other, so sometimes she walks up the steps of one and then goes, oh, wait, wrong house.

There's a "writ of reclamation" hanging on the door of the house where we worked. At some point, history-conscious Connie will remove that piece of paper and...

...file it away with other historical documents pertaining to the house.

Connie ran the heavy equipment while I pulled staples and nails. She showed me the various aspects of the equipment so I would know this stuff: how to change the sandpaper on the drum roller and the edger, the importance of stripping with the grain and not pausing, or you'll dig yourself a little trench.

Ever since I was a kid splitting endless stacks of wood to heat our rural home--no plumbing until I was in 5th Grade--I've invented little games in my head to make repetitive manual labor more fun. So I invented one of those games and--if I do say so, myself--pulled staples and nails with the patience of a saint.

Of course, no matter how hard you try, you're going to miss a few. When these nails and staples get hit by the sander, it throws sparks. Actually, I think that part is pretty cool.

Even though the two rooms we stripped were empty, evidence of the former occupants was still there in the form of "micro-artifacts." Something I thought was the head of a nail turned out to be a marijuana seed. I found many of these, actually. Bales of marijuana must have been smoked in that room, for that many seeds to end up in the cracks.

In the crannies near the walls, I also found four wheat pennies, two from 1946, one from 1956, and one from 1957. Naturally, I found a lot of other pennies, and two dimes. I thought Connie might want the old pennies as an artifact of the house, so I showed them to her. She looked at me blankly. Connie didn't even know what a wheat penny WAS.

Sure, she'll carry around Honduran currency in her wallet, but that's just because she has some left over from her last trip to Honduras. The subject of coin collecting is tedious beyond endurance to Connie, to the point she will shout "BORING!!!!" like an unruly teenager while two other people are discussing, for example, the wartime need for zinc-coated steel pennies in 1943.

Well, this just means more wheat pennies for ME, but I'll have to remember to temper my numismatic enthusiasm around Connie.

Another "micro-artifact" I found was in the closet. I came upon it while ripping out the little strip of edge board. It was a .22 caliber bullet; high velocity, hollow point, it looked like to me.

"One of yours?" I asked Connie, but it wasn't.

We took a break so Connie could smoke and I could eat the contents of her crock pot. Connie had made a wonderful stew using salvaged turkey--another story for another day--which tasted pretty good, but tasted even better with Tabasco sauce, of course. (This is true of most entrees, actually)

Connie was pretty impressed with my ability to dribble Tabasco sauce directly on my tongue, I could tell. I told her I could also drink the stuff from a shot glass, but "only when there's money on the table."

Connie had some plants started on top of her radiators. She told me radiators are "perfect" for starting plants, or laying wet mittens after Minnesota wintertime fun. This is not the first time Connie has tried to sell me on the superiority of steam radiators to baseboard electrical heating.

To this I say: show me a steam radiator that can use solar power instead of fossil fuels.

When we returned to sanding floors, Connie showed me how full the sawdust bag was. I told her, "Wow, your sanding actually made the room bigger!"

One of the last pictures I took of showed Connie's hair so full of dust it appeared gray. For a moment I had a vision of Connie as an old woman and guess what? She still looked great.

A workman I know told me some folks who do renovations won't hire anybody to do floors, because sanding floors is THAT much fun, and THAT satisfying. It was indeed satisfying, though we were both sore and dog tired when it was done.

On Monday, we took the sander back to Pete's Hardwood Floors in St. Paul, known as "the dragon guys" because of their corporate symbol. They sell their own homemade instructional video, and people who submit pictures and stories about their sanding can win a t-shirt, retail value $19.95.

Well, gee, I thought...it looks like I'll finally get compensated to do what I gladly do for free.