12 Hours Hard Labor, 1 Lesson Learned
Well, after only getting in 30 minutes of meaningful work on Friday we certainly made up for it Saturday. We were able to work on things pretty much non-stop from 8am until sundown. I woke up this morning and my right shoulder definitely feels the workout.
In that time we got through all the staining and most of the shellac. Our back yard looked like a trim factory!
The one regret I have was a lesson learned early in the day. After I went over all the nail holes and gouges with wood filler, I had a major problem with the stain on the first board: the putty took the stain differently than the wood. This was a problem because I hadn't been real careful to scrape off all the extra putty around the hole...
Luckly I stopped pretty quickly and only had that problem with half of one board. The extra putty came off on the others pretty easily with a damp paper towel.
While we made great progress, we didn't finish everything ...we ran out of shellac again. :-( I don't know why we just didn't mix all the flakes we had, but hindsight is 20/20 I guess. I made a final batch with everything we had at about 6pm last night so hopefully it will be ready by late this afternoon.
In the mean time we might actually get to try installing a few pieces.
We might not get as much done today, though, because this is the day of our neighborhood's annual block party. For over twenty years they've been blocking off the street and having a potluck-style barbeque dinner on Labor Day. As I write this at 7:30am, the guy across the street is already firing up his slowcooker.
OK, so I'm off to take two Advil for this shoulder...
(3)
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Comments
Nice work and enjoy the BBQ. I'm taking the day off as well to go to a BBQ at a friends cabin. It is up in the mountains and apparently pretty remote – I’ve never been there before. It has no electricity. I'm really looking forward to it.
Posted by: Greg | September 4, 2005 11:17 AM
my 2 cents for what it's worth: We use wood putty by minwax to fill the old holes and then sand the entire board with 120 grit (final sand). I have found that treating the boards with linseed oil prior helps get an even stain too. We have yet to shellac our trim anywhere- all our wood is stained and unprotected- which makes it succeptible to fading but we just haven't gotten to that yet!
I think your wood looks very nice though- it's a different color than we have done- but I like it alot!
Posted by: Jocelyn | September 5, 2005 4:06 PM
Thanks Jocelyn! (And thanks for the tip about the linseed oil.)
We've actually stained the trim BACK to its original color, which matches the doors as well. We have (very few) pieces that weren't painted, but we were able to get a very close match...
Posted by: jm | September 5, 2005 4:29 PM