Thursday, March 10, 2022

I F***ed Up

I messed up the basement staining project. Obviously. I know I could just paint the plywood and I probably should, but I can't without at least trying to fix my mess. Anyone who has followed the blog for a while will know that I'm not good at settling. 

I stained the first part on Sunday and it was darker than I wanted, but it was tolerable
but as I worked my way around the room, it kept getting darker and darker. I obviously had a mixing issue. By the afternoon, it was so dark, it was really unacceptable so I stopped.
I'm frustrated with myself because I knew better. I don't know why I didn't get samples of the plywood and practice; I always have before. I guess I was just impatient to get this project done. (I want my long arm machine!)

I spent Monday trying to figure out what to do next. I really don't like painting wood, even plywood. I tried sanding down one of the sections of plywood and the stain came off fairly well, so I decided to give it a shot. I started out by stripping the boards. I tried to sand them in place, but it really wasn't going to work because I couldn't get to the edges, so Jeff uninstalled them for me.
About two-thirds of the boards I could just flip over and go with the unstained backsides, the others I had to sand down through the stain.
Today, finally, I turned my attention to sanding the plywood. This is what I could get done in about four hours. I'm hoping as the stain gets lighter, the panels will sand faster and maybe I'll get this done by the end of the weekend. Unfortunately, I'm not super motivated to work for long hours on this project.
This was after one pass with 80 grit sandpaper. I can't sand the plywood clean because I'm worried I'll sand through the douglas fir ply. This should be good enough to apply a lighter color. I will be going over this area again with finer grit sandpaper after I finish the first pass.

I already bought the proper stain and I took it to Sherwin Williams and had it shaken. I will not be making this mistake again. Ever!

Now that all the boards are removed, I am going to go ahead and stain them loose like I usually do. It should also make it easier to stain the wainscoting. Once everything is stained I'll reinstall the boards and then apply the varnish finish coat. 

2 comments:

  1. John says he seals plywood with Bennite before he stains it so that it doesn't absorb so much stain and doesn't get blotchy.

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    1. Yeah, I should have done that. I actually had a can of stain pre-treatment but I just forgot about it. Yeah, it was really stupid.

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