Another beautiful weekend at my summer home in the Hamptons (Mom and Dad's house in Hampton IA) and more progress on the crib. The last two weekends were spent on finishing up the actual construction. This week was the assembly and final preparation. Let's get right to it shall we? Again, what follows is long and likely boring. Again, there are no final pictures.... but we are getting really close. Can't you just feel the anticipation?
First we did a dry fit, just to make sure that everything fit perfect. A dry fit is just putting everything together without the glue. It was close, but I had a bit of sanding where the side rail came over the post. Once everything was all good we took it apart. Then, of course, was one more round of final sanding.
Sanding is infuriating. It's like dating but without the fun parts. You start with the drum sander, and it's good, but not good enough (You will repeat this part of dating repeatedly). Then you try the random orbital sander with 120 grit (Exclusive dating). It looks great, but something isn't right. So you move on to 180, but then there is a spot that isn't right so you have to put some wood putty on it to fix it up. (That is like "time apart"). Eventually you realize you had a good thing and will do what you have to do to make it work. So you sand it again. Everything looks great until you put it in perspective of a final project (marriage). Eventually you have to accept that it's going to take more work and more attention and grab a piece of sandpaper and work at it (Probably mid 20's and only after repeating the prior steps repeatedly). And that my friends is love. When you realize that the only way to get the final product is to put everything else aside and really work at it.
This is by far my weirdest and dumbest metaphor yet. A real failure, but look at all those words! I can't delete this now. I have too much time in it!
Just to bring this back in, here's another angle of the dry fit.
OK, back on point. Once everything was sanded to marriage levels we glued everything up into the four pieces. Next up was the dye. The first pic is of the mixing process. One part dye, fourteen parts lacquer thinner. I asked dad, "Why do you use laquer thinner?" He explained it to me, but all I got out of it was that it was a good way to do it. I know it works, and I don't know a better way to do it, so I shut up.
The next few pics just show dad applying the dye. It's like staining wood, but better. It sprays on, gets a better final product, and dries alot faster. It's crazy watching Dad do this.
1. Dude has crazy shaky hands when drinking coffee until his hand grabs the sprayer. At that point it's like watching Rainman count cards. It's automatic. It's smooth. He would have been great at graffiti.
2. The dye by itself looks awful. Dad warned me about this. It's an ugly purple color that has a weird matte finish.
3. One you blow finish, lacquer of some kind, onto the wood it looks great. (By the way, there is no metaphor there, pervert.)
We did four coats of dye to match the other furniture we made. Then we started blowing finish. The next two pics show the diffarance between the dyed wood, and the dyed wood with finish on it.
Why is it that Dad is doing the finishing on my project? Well, having him available to do that process and doing it yourself is like having Warren Buffet offer to manage your investments and firing up the E*Trade account. It would just be stupid.
That's it for tonight. Sunday Mom and Dad are going to deliver it. By then we will even have the base and the mattress in it. It's turning out awesome, just as the time spent with my folks has been. There are a few final touches yet to come. Check back soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment