Thursday, January 11, 2007

Furniture Finishing: The Saga Continues

The staining of the table top is complete and if I've learned anything from this fine, flat piece of wood, it's that I don't know crap about finishing furniture and I should I ever quit my day job, I should not consider carpentry a viable career path. Or furniture rejuvenation. I'm not even sure furniture rejuvenation is a career path, but if it is, I certainly shouldn't be allowed to follow it.

I've been staining with a special "staining sponge" my father purchased and I love it. Something about dragging that little piece of terry cloth up and down the wood makes me so happy. It distributes smoothly, fluidly... languidly. As a staining accessory I feel it was worth every penny. Unlike the tack cloth which I feel should be renamed ATtack cloth, because it's very sticky and it latches on to your hand with a certain ferocity when you remove it from the package... but I digress. I love, love, love the staining sponge. Sadly, it turns into a rock when you leave it on the balcony over night.

Luckily there are two in every pack. Since I wasted the first one, I've been trying to conserve the second. This means washing it out in the sink every night. It may or may not be legal to pour stain down your sink, even in small amounts, but I forgot about the environmental impact when I saw what it was doing to my fingers.



This actually looks much better than the infamous basket weaving incident where my whole middle finger turned red, but I still look like a hobo with permanently grubby nails.

So, The table top is done leaving me with just four legs, four braces, two chairs and a bed to stain. I'm looking forward to the bed because it comes with this handy IKEA warning label:



I looked at these pictures for awhile and found two possible translations 1) "We know you're thrify (And we at IKEA appreciate your business!), so please use your own blood to grease this piece of metal" or 2) "If you keep washing your staining sponges in the sink, your fingers will eventually ooze black liquid. Good luck with that."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure we took a picture of your red finger. I'm going to have to post that. It's pretty great.

I repeat: TACK CLOTH. WHAT IS IT? I think Megan and Katie P. are trying to lead me astray.