Finishing Class: Glazing Over

Today in class was another slow day. The weather has been a bit damp and the finishes just weren't drying fast enough.

Today's lesson was: Glazing!

Glazing is a technique where you add gel stain into the profile detail to make it look more antique. It was amazing to watch! You apply it thickly and then rub it down until there is just some darkening of the finish. This technique is definitely worth learning.

Tomorrow they're covering how to buff the finish to a high gloss, something I don't have a ton of interest in. So, I decided I am going to skip tomorrow's class. Jeff is going to go and learn the material and I'm going to stay home and do some last minute dusting and vacuuming.

My stepmother is allergic to dogs and I'm trying to do everything I can to remove the excess dog dander we have everywhere! It might be a lost cause, but I'll try and minimize her discomfort.

Finishing Class: Sealing Coat

Class today was mostly spent applying the first, and sometimes second, sealing coat and a whole lot of finishing talk while we waited for boards to dry. This teacher is a real advocate for shellac, lacquer or varnish finishes; his favorite is lacquer. In his opinion, polyurethane is evil. It impossible to repair and it fills your wood grain with plastic. He's an advocate for the less high tech finishes because of their repairability.

In the morning we got a chance to play with dye! We made purple! In some sense we failed because we were trying for burgundy! But I like the purple better. This would be a very fun color for a piece of furniture. =)

During the lunch break, Jeff and I walked next door to EcoHaus and checked out some materials for our remodel project. I think we might have to go with Fireclay Debris Tile for our bathroom addition. The tiles contain over 60% recycled materials and are made on the west coast!

These photos are similar to samples they had in the store, and they were quite nice (though not the colors we are likely to choose). Craftsman bathrooms just seem to need subway tile, though I think we do have to be careful not to overdo the accent tiles. I'm gonna have to do more research about how they tiled their bathrooms in period.



I discovered these tiles are made in San Jose, CA and I can go drop into their factory showroom when I visit next month. I'm definitely gonna have to add it to my itinerary.

Finishing Class: Hide Glue Discovered!

Today we spent the class time preparing our wood surfaces for staining. Our big learning for the day was: Hide Glue!

We didn't actually use the glue for gluing, but for sealing the pores of the grain. We applied the hide glue to the wood, let it dry, then applied stain. We tried samples with a couple of different sealers and without, and in our opinion, the hide glue was always the best at smoothing out the surface.
















We also got to experiment with mixing up colored stains.

Finishing Class: We Scraped By

We attended our first day of Finishing class today. It was wonderful and we learned a lot. We learned some skills for preparing the unfinished wood for finishing.

We got to use card scrapers and smoothing planes for the first time! They worked really well and we're going to try them out on the cabinet doors with the pesky white paint. These hand tool skills are great to learn and we'll also be able to use them in SCA later on.

More Progress, but Slow

Now that our furniture population has mostly stabilized, Jeff and I have been shifting furniture around to get it fit in better. We had a printer cabinet to put down in the home theater area so we actually had to move over the entertainment center about 6 inches. Boy, was that ever fun! But at least now that we know the arrangement has stabilized, I feel free to "move in." I unpacked a number of boxes yesterday into the drawers of the entertainment cabinet.

Also, since I cannot bear to get rid of the DVD cases, we put the disks back in them last night. A couple years ago, due to space constraints, we had pulled the disks out of the cases and put them in binders and put the boxes in storage.

Last night we put the disks back in the boxes and alphabetized them and put them in the entertainment cabinet. Unfortunately, the drawers don't fit all the different kind of DVD cases, so we actually have two separate sections! (Bummer!) All the DVD cases that fit in the drawers are alphabetized in the drawers and all the ones that were too tall are in the right upper cabinet. It will have to do for now, until we manage to rip the movies to a disk then they all can get stowed away.

Our tapestries have been rolled in a bundle and kicking around my sewing room since we moved to Redwood City, so today I finally unwrapped the bundle and we decided to at least hang them temporarily on the picture rail. That way they aren't kicking around the rooms and they get to be enjoyed. Ultimately, I don't know if they'll survive the remodel; we may well sell them because they don't necessarily fit the Craftsman look we're going for, but we're enjoying them for now.

We're off this afternoon to go buy tools for our finishing class. We signed up for the class over a month ago, but they wait until the last business day before the class to tell us what supplies we're expected to bring. Nice! So now we don't have sufficient time to shop around online for good deals. Oh well, another lesson learned.

Hoarding

This morning I started watching the "Hoarding" series on Netflix — OMG! The people on this program are scary. It is clear to me hoarding tendencies definitely run in my family.

Watching this show has unearthed many memories of our efforts to help my Mom clean up her house. While her house definitely isn't as bad as some of the houses on the show, she has many of the same issues as these folks. She always had to touch and "approve" everything before it left the house. You'd spend hours cleaning and only manage to unearth like a square foot of floor. The one time I really screwed up is when I tried to clean up the garage without my Mom's permission (by inviting my father and brother to remove their stuff). She took away my house key and I'm pretty sure, she never forgave me for that... So, after that, I simply just stopped trying to help.

I guess this can be a wake up call for me. I tend towards being a "keeper." As long as I have space, why get rid of something I might need later? So far, I've been lucky to have had large homes, for the most part. I am also lucky I am an organized person and am able to organize the stuff I save, so we can usually find it again.

But with the last several moves, we've accumulated more and more misc. boxes. And I picked up a number of boxes of "Grandma's Stuff" from my grandmother's house I still need to sift. Once we finish remodeling the house next year, we really need to finally adjust our stuff supply so it fits comfortably in our space. I want to be able to clean up for company and not be embarrassed by how cluttered my home looks.

We're living in a bit of chaos right now because we don't really want to unpack everything and "move in" when we'll be remodeling in the next year and we'll have to move out of the spaces again.

Jeff and I actually cleaned a fair amount this past week just by wandering around the house and collapsing empty boxes. My father is visiting soon and I didn't want to have the living space filled with a bunch of empty moving boxes and packing supplies. It's better—but it's not clean by any means.

Fall Classes Begin

Jeff went off this morning to start an Organic Gardening class. He signed up for the Multnomah County Extension Service Organic Gardening Certificate. This class runs every Saturday from 9-4 through November 13.

It's actually a little odd having him gone. We've hardly been separated since early July and the house is very quiet. Though, soon I'll also be too busy to notice.

On Monday morning, Jeff and I both start a week-long Finishing course through the NW Woodworking Studio. The class was very spendy but we're hoping it will pay itself back when we have the skills to finish our own woodwork after the paint is stripped off.

The following Monday, we both start classes at Portland Community College. I am taking 4 paralegal classes, Jeff is taking 3 landscaping classes.