Dark Day of the Edge Sander

The good news is that I’m now completely done sanding my floors I still have a lot more sanding to do.

In the meantime, here are ten infuriating things about the edge sanding experience:

1. I don’t think that thing has more than a square inch of actual sandaper-meets-floor surface on it.
2. The pig tail cord came out constantly.
3. Running that thing within the confines of a 2′ x 3′ coat closet left my ears ringing.
4. This position for a day (plus a few hours):
   
5. The dust-catch bag kept falling off (which resulted in the thing shooting dust straight into my face).
6. Sometimes it doesn’t want to go in the direction you’re pushing it.
7. Left some really nice circular divots in the hallway.
8. The inflating dust-catch bag was always in the way.
9. Sometimes it catches something and goes shooting off in a given direction, banging your knuckles against a wall.
10. When you’re done, it doesn’t look like you accomplished all that much.

Yesterday was probably my least favorite day I’ve had since I quit Toshiba. Granted, the competition for that designation has been less than stiff (yes, edge sanding my floors was less fun than rafting down the Tuolumne, hiking in Acadia, and fishing in Minnesota — shocking), but still. I mean, it’s been 11 months. Worst activity in 11 months!

I was thinking on Thursday that, no matter what I did Friday, I wasn’t going to do more sanding. And then I got to the Home Despot on Friday and figured that since I was there (at the location with the tool rental), I might as well just rent the edger and finish up the rooms. How hard could it be? Yeah.

Nemesis:

Parked at the corner of Sanded and Unsanded.

My guess is that Home Depot’s edge sanders might not be the best specimens, but it’s what I had available. And now I still have to clean everything up with my orbital sander anyway. It won’t surprise me to find out that the orbital sander would have been better than the edge sander in the first place (at any rate, I know all 3.1415*(2.5^2) of surface area do work on my orbital). Then I probably have to hand-sand the deepest corners. It’ll be arduous. It’ll be back-breaking. It’ll be bloody (unless I wear gloves).

C’est la guerre.

bkd