Hey Mr. Sandman

Happy...Monday??  I wish it were still the weekend, but I won't hate on Monday, it's not his fault.  I'm feeling much better now, cold-free and made use of the weekend accordingly!  Saturday we headed over to my aunt's house for my cousin's daughter's 1st birthday party.  She's adorable and spending the afternoon with her has me wanting to meet my little niece so badly!!  7 weeks to go!

Today I got busy with the staircase again....maybe that came out wrong.  I got busy sanding the staircase.  My fingers, wrists, triceps and back are quite sore already! 

I started with the platform parts of the stairs...here's a half-way done picture.

In case this beaut doesn't speak for itself, the left side is untouched and the right side has been sanded.

Here's a little reminder of what the side panel looked like before I had my way with it...

After 6 hours of hard labour, here's what I left it looking like

It's got to look worse before it looks better, right?

I haven't got to the spindles yet, and I have to get into the angled parts with the detail sander next weekend.  And then I'll have to repeat this whole entire process at least 2 more times!  Once with a medium grit sand paper and then again with a fine grit.  I don't know if those parts will be quicker or if they'll take longer than the first bit I've done with the coarse grit.  I'm really hoping it'll be quicker!

I tell ya...this is a job and a half!  And nowhere near done!  My personal goal is that I hope to have it done in 4 weeks, when I'll be hosting my sister's baby shower.  I think I might be a little over-ambitious with that timeline seeing as I only have 3 weekends to do the bulk of it.  But I'm throwing it out there anyways and maybe I just might surprise myself!

This will be me for, at least, the next month...

What did you get up to this weekend?  Were you able to cross something off your list too?  Is anyone else up to their ta-tas in sawdust??