Not so much from the tall draft of Mich Ultra that I washed down my dinner at Texas Road House with, but from the chemicals I was using this afternoon to refinish the more than seventy-year-old fir floor of the enclosed porch of our house.

I don't believe the fir was ever intended to be anything more than a sub-floor for the 2 layers of carpeting and the layer of linoleum that I removed earlier this year, but I'm not sure why. I could tell that the wood was pretty and clear-grained even with a thin coating of black mastic hanging on to the surface as if its life depended on it.

Initially, I considered hiring someone to refinish the floor.

But since this was "just a porch" although by most standards, a very nice porch -- it's 10 foot by 20 with 14 windows and approximately 400 panes of glass and three ceiling fans -- I thought I would give it a try.

Using a couple of my sanders I confirmed the beauty of the wood. I also deduced that I would probably burn out both of my sanders and spend about $12,000 on sanding pads attempting to get the floor into presentable shape.

So earlier this summer, I rented a drum sander from Rental Land. I'd never used a drum sander, but it is the tool of choice for quickly refinishing a wood floor.

I'm not afraid of trying out tools that I've never used before, but I'd heard horror stories of the damage one of these powerful monsters can do to a wood floor in a second of inattentiveness, so I was a little apprehensive.

However, my fears were unfounded since I apparently had a light enough touch to use the machine and remove the black mastic leaving the beautiful fir exposed. Of course, the mastic probably was full of vitamins and minerals -- Asbestos is one of those, right? -- but isn't that what those 50-cent paper masks are there to protect you from?

Anyhow, the newly-sanded floor was not perfect. Things rarely are when it comes to remodeling old houses. There's always a catch or two. In this case, there were a few places in the floor that were discolored. I'm guessing that over the years water had leached in through the end-grain of the boards causing the dark marks.

My attempts to sand down the discolorations with my hand sanders were in vain. That kind of put the kibosh on just applying a couple coats of polyurethane on the fir. So to help mask the problem my wife picked out a dark Minwax stain. We tested it on the floor in one corner of the porch and liked what we saw.

That's why I was staining today. However, since fir is a soft wood I first used a pre-stain conditioner. You brush the conditioner on, wait five to ten minute, before wiping off any residue with lint-free rags. Repeat until you've done all 200 square feet of porch.

However, the caveat to using pre-stain conditioner is that you have to be staining within two hours of applying. Or at least that's what the can said, so it must be so.... so immediately after pre-staining, I started staining. I didn't even take a break.

Staining is basically the same process as the conditioning. Brush it on, wait 5 to 10 minutes, then wipe off any excess. The big difference between the two is that there is more excess stain to wipe off than pre-stain. A lot more.

But the one big similarity between the pre-stain and the stain is the smell.

I swear the fumes of both chemicals must be 60-proof. That's why after about 5 hours of conditioning and staining the floor, I finally managed to stagger out of the house looking more than a little like Lee Marvin's drunken-gunslinger Kid Shelleen in the classic western "Cat Ballou."

After that marathon bender, I probably had no business driving my wife to Texas Road House for dinner and a beer. I'm sure that if I'd gotten pulled over for weaving my way down Bloomfield Road, I'd have probably blown at least a point one.

But thankfully, that didn't happen. We had our dinner and drinks and made it home without any incident.

But I swear, I'm still a bit buzzed.

I sure hope I've sobered up by tomorrow. I have three-coats of oil-based polyurethane to start applying. That stuff is even worse than the conditioner or the stain. I think it's close to 90-proof.