Quick Desktop Project

In January we ordered Jeff an Uplift Desk frame, but the solid wood tops were crazy expensive; like $550-1000 expensive. I couldn't bring myself to spend that much when we have a garage full of wood and some pretty decent tools. But⏤as is so typical for us⏤neither of us had enough motivation to drive the process so the boxes just sat. 

After a bit of looking around for more affordable options, I had an idea. I would look for a beat-up table on craigslist or FB marketplace and we would simply take it apart and, if necessary, sand down the top and refinish it. I obviously preferred something that was solid wood and could be cut to size without exposing the cheap inner core of veneer pieces.

Finally, I found this table on the marketplace for $25. The wood is a bit more knotty than I prefer, but it was an amazing deal and was solid wood. 

It was slightly larger than would fit in Jeff's desk space so we needed to cut 3" off one edge. It took us far longer to clean up the table saw and space around it than the actual cutting. Then I got started on sanding right away and am nearly finished putting on a few coats of finish.

Hopefully, we'll finally be able to assemble the desk tomorrow but it takes 4 hours of drying time between coats of the finish, so we'll see if I can get enough in throughout the day today.

I'm still hoping once the weather gets nice outside we'll still work on something more decorative with lots of different woods for Jeff's desk, but this will do for now.

Basement Closet Finished

Except for the door, the closet is finished!

I had hoped to stain this closet like we stained the others (with the support boards stained and the shelf boards not), but masking was taking way too long and I would have had to go buy more masking tape so I gave up the effort. I was beyond ready to be done with this project so I bailed on that plan and just stained it all the same color.

It's time to start packing up the dressers to prepare for the movers on Wednesday. And, I think I can finally schedule delivery of my long arm. I'm excited about all the quilting fun I get to have this summer.

Sanding Again

I finally got back to work on the basement today. I spent ALL DAY masking and sanding the closet. Tomorrow I'm planning to wipe down the wood and start staining. 

I scheduled movers to help us move in next Wednesday so now I have a deadline.

Ready for Moving Day

Now that I can take photos of the other side of the basement, I thought it would be fun to continue my basement tour. 

I still need to finish staining the inside of the closet, the two new doors and the vestibule area at the basement door, but I am going to wait for some nicer weather so I can sand the doors outside. 

We also need to sand and put a top coat on the new stair treads. We had the contractor leave the masking on them because I didn't want them to get too dirty while I figure out what to finish them with. I had thought I bought the correct finish coat I needed, but I just read on the can that it cannot be used on floors so I need to find something else. I'm hoping to get the stairs finished in the next few weeks but I need to find a time when we can avoid walking on them for several days.

Tomorrow I will start calling around and see if I can find some movers to help us shuffle furniture around the house. We're going to move one of the bedrooms down here temporarily so we have a place to sleep when it gets so dang HOT this summer. We were miserable last summer.

Staining Again

I've spent the past several days in the basement again. I'm trying to get the basement finished enough that we can have movers come and help us shuffle furniture. I still need to finish the interior of the closet and the doors, but most of the baseboard is stained and varnished now. At this point, I'm just waiting for the varnish to dry enough to remove the masking and then touch up the paint. 

Staining the baseboard around the back of the new laundry room sink was not fun. It was pretty hard to crawl under it to reach the back but it will be worth it. I LOVE the new sink and faucet, it is so much more useful now.

This coming week, we are hoping to start moving furniture into the basement family room. Jeff is eager to start working down there.

Dungeon No More!

I still need to finish staining the doors and baseboard in the rest of the basement, but the family room/office is done!! I dug through my old photos because I thought it would be fun to compare how it looked when we bought the house. 

(Unfortunately, most of the built-ins that were in place when we bought the house had to be removed before we moved in for the basement repair; the foundation had some large cracks in it at the time and we had them repaired immediately.)

I'm pretty excited about how this turned out. Tim Austin did a wonderful job. It's actually nicer than I originally anticipated. I had not expected to have wainscoting in there, but I didn't want drywall all the way down to the floor and plywood worked out better with Tim's plan.

Almost Finished

I've finished varnishing the woodwork in the family room!

I was pretty excited about being finished and then I started taking off the masking tape. The delay in removing it was not kind as there are a number of spots where it peeled off the paint. Sigh. This is by far the worst spot that needs to be touched up.

Tim left me with a very heavy 5-gallon can of leftover paint so I am going to take it into Sherwin Williams tomorrow to get some help with mixing and pouring into smaller cans. 

Ready for Varnish!

I'm so happy we reached the point where I can finally start varnishing! Yay!

Obviously, it would have been nice if I hadn't messed it up and added two weeks of sanding to the process, but I'm happy I finally got there in the end. Let this serve as a cautionary tale for anyone else who decides to follow in our footsteps. Be sure to test your stain on scraps. And thoroughly mix the stain beforehand.

I'm hoping to start varnishing tomorrow.

Reinstalling Boards

I was gone for several days this past week, but I have returned and am getting back to work. Today we started reinstalling the boards. We decided to move some of them around because they had visible knots and we replaced a couple of them. 

Tomorrow we should be able to reinstall the last of the boards and the wainscot staining will finally be finished. It's been an unnecessarily long process, but I'm looking forward to finally reaching the next step.

More Staining

Got the first coat done; round 2 starts tomorrow.

I'm hoping to finish all the staining in the family room this weekend. I'll still have the baseboards on the other side of the basement, but this hard part is nearly finished.

Update on Saturday: Second coat finished. They look darker in person than they do in the photos. I'll let them dry until tomorrow then I'll finish the 2nd coat on the walls.

Update on Sunday: All finished. 

Next, we'll reinstall the boards on the seams, touch up any spots that need it, then I'll varnish everything.

Staining Again

I finally coaxed myself to start staining again. 

It's better this time. I'm glad I took the time to sand it; I will like this much better, even the areas with the dark undertone from the disastrous dark red mahogany stain. 

On the bright side, once this basement wood is finished, I never have to use this awful stain again.

The next coat is a gel stain so it is much easier to apply.

The light marks will be covered by boards, once they are reinstalled.

Basement Sanded

I guess it's been more than a week since I last posted. I sanded the plywood down in the basement. It took me several days. I obviously couldn't get the darkest areas as light as I would have liked.

I went and bought the new red mahogany stain and tested it with pre-stain wood conditioner on scrap plywood. This is what the color was supposed to look like.

I'm actually ready to start staining again, but I can't because it will take too many days to finish and we're going to have a friend stay with us next weekend and we can't have the house stinking like stain and varnish. It's pretty horrible for several days.

So, instead, I'm planning to focus on cleaning up and prepping to start right after the visit.

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. 

Basement Staining Day 1

Upstairs, our wood was all stained with a combo of two different stains. The first coat was Mohawk Wiping Wood Stain in Red Mahogany. The second coat was Wood Kote Jel'd Stain in Cherry color.

I tried to finish the wood in the basement with the same, but when I went and bought the stain, I accidentally grabbed the Dark Red Mahogany stain and didn't realize it until after I'd used half the can. To be honest, if I'd realized Light Red Mahogany was an alternative, I would have gotten that instead. A lighter stain would have been preferred for the basement.

It is what it is; I'm already halfway finished with the basement family room. The Dark Mahogany is dark. When I started this morning, I panicked a little about how dark it was but then I reminded myself that once it dries, it does lighten up. And once I add the Jel'd Cherry, the color will shift and be closer to the upstairs.

This plywood is sort of horrible to stain. It immediately absorbs the stain and is nearly impossible to spread it out and get it even. But the plywood was a reasonable compromise to save money on this job. If it turns out really horrible, I will simply paint the interior of the panels, like this.

It took me about 6 hours to stain half the family room today and so I decided to spread the task over a couple of days. That means that it's going to be at least 4 days of staining in just the family room side of the basement. Then I'll have to repeat the process for the rest of basement, so it looks like I'll be at this for about a week.