I am a solid, walking ball of pain today. Every muscle in my body is screaming at me to to just sit down and not move, something that isn’t going to happen any time soon.
I never imagined that staining countertops would be such a harsh activity on my body, but apparently rubbing stain in, wiping it off, then sanding between coats of poly on 6 different surfaces is a lot of work. And I’m feeling every tiny twitch right now.
But, I have stained countertops.
I’m not in love with them, because they came out a little darker, streakier and spottier than I had expected after my test run. They still look pretty good, just not quite as nice as I’d hoped. I’m going to live with them and just say they have a slightly “rustic” look because my alternative is to sand them down and start over. I don’t dislike them enough to make that worth it, so I’m keeping what I have.
That said, my table top came out amazing and so did the two non-butcher block surfaces I stained. When it is all in place and functioning it is still going to look nice. It has taken 5 coats of poly, so far, to get these where they are. Fingers crossed #5 is the magic number and I’m actually done.
The goal is to try and get them anchored in place today. I’m now officially in a time crunch to get this done. I have a little over a week before we have our visitors here. I know the whole thing isn’t getting done by then, so I have a plan to get to a stable stopping point for now.
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- Get the counters done and in.
- Get the stairs trimmed out and ready for carpet.
- Get the floor in this room done.
- Reframe out the doorway to the basement and take off the temporary door.
If I can get all those things done, then we can FINALLY move the cat boxes back down to their little room and out of the room that will become MCG’s when she gets here in the fall. I want her to be able to see that space when she is here in a week as a decent, clean space instead of the mess it currently is.
This is all assuming no more major bad days, but this list should be doable. It does mean I’m working my tail off until then, because I don’t even have that full time to work. I have several things I still need to do to get prepped for the visit and that is going to knock off at least a couple of days.
I’d love for the carpet to be able to go in before they get here, but I doubt that is going to happen. There will still be a lot of work left to actually finish this room, but it gets me to a good pause point that still looks mostly finished.
Oh, did you see the doors? They went up perfectly! I’m over the moon happy that I switched to the hidden hinges as it allowed me to make micro adjustments to get them all lined up the way they needed to be. The entire space is starting to look amazing!
I might be scarce here for bit so I can focus on this, but I’m sure I’ll try and poke my head out every once in a while.
TJ Fox: Sharing the Experience 