Archives for October 2013

My Little Staining Secret

October 21, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

Y’all… it has been a CRAZY week here in my world. I’m furiously getting ready for my Halloween Party (see the invite here) and I was in a wedding this last weekend… pair that with a busy time at work and I skipped out on a few blog posts… this is the one I promised I’d have last Friday, and well… that didn’t happen, so here it is! I’m catching up this week on the blog with a few projects I’ve been working on, so stay tuned!

I’m one of those people who makes a GIANT mess when I am in the process of a project. So project cleanup takes almost as long as the project itself. I’ve just come to accept this as a fact of life and move on with it. So when we stained the shelves and an altar table for church (a post is coming!) in one week/weekend, this is what the floor of my garage looked like:

I told y’all here about my staining process and mentioned that I use old t-shirts as my staining rags. They work great, but the downside is that you get stain ALL OVER YOUR HANDS. The first few times I stained I tried to wear latex gloves, but it turns out… I hate wearing them. And they are hot. So I figured out that olive oil (or vegetable oil) removes the stain gently from your hands (I’m sure there is something chemistry related about why oil takes off oil based paints and stain which is oil based, but I’m an English major, so I’m happy just knowing that it does… I definitely don’t need to know why). So here’s what my hands looked like after wiping the stain from the shelves:

I usually have a cheap-0 bottle of vegetable oil in the garage to do this process, but my husband tossed it out because it looked pretty nasty and he didn’t know what it was. So until I replace it, he has to help me pour our normal cooking olive oil over my hands because he is not in favor of getting stain all over the bottle that we cook with… imagine that! And even so, this is definitely an easier and cleaner process if you have someone to help you by turning on the sink and pouring the olive oil and soap on your hands. However… it is totally possible. You know those Delta no-touch faucet commercials… I’m pretty sure they got that idea by watching me try to turn on my sink with my elbow.

Anyway… (fair warning… this isn’t the prettiest process… so bear with the nasty pictures, I promise there is a clean one at the end!) Pour enough olive oil over your hands to fully coat them and spend about 20 seconds rubbing it in and scrubbing at the parts where the stain is thicker, it’ll turn your hands a ~~gorgeous~~ nasty earth brown color.

Now you have solved the stain problem, but oil and water don’t mix… so you have to solve the oil problem. Dawn to the rescue! (or any dish soap)

And finally wash all that with water. If all your stain isn’t off, rinse and repeat until clean. Although I’m pretty messy and I’ve never had it take me more than two rounds. And there it is, my not so dirty little secret, plus the olive oil makes your hands feel soft and smooth!

Filed Under: Wood

How to Stain

October 17, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

When I posted my shelves I promised a how to on staining. I have a love hate relationship with staining. I absolutely LOVE the way stain can transform a piece. It can show off the beautiful grain of wood, it looks both rustic and finished all at the same time. I love stained pieces. I do not love staining pieces. Its messy and time consuming, but OH SO WORTH the results. And I’ll show you a few tips and tricks I have for surviving the stain game.

First of all supplies:

I use foam brushes that are cheap from Home Depot to apply the stain (I’m sure Lowe’s has them too… I just live closer to HD).
A tshirt or old socks to wipe down
stain of your choice- I’ve used Minwax for a long time, although recently I’ve been using Varthane because of its shorter dry time and I like the Kona color
Sandpaper
An area you don’t mind getting messy or a dropcloth

Steps:

1. Lay your wood out in a place you don’t mind getting messy and elevated a bit off the floor (scrap wood or whatever you have laying around make good elevation so that your stain doesn’t puddle on the floor).

The picture above is before I cut my wood down to size for the shelves… but I basically put the wood back in the same spot to stain it.

2. Sand it with 220 grit sandpaper. If you are staining an older piece or one that has already been painted or stained before, you’ll need to remove the prior stain/paint. You can either use a sander or stripper for that but that’s a whole ‘nother post on its own! Always sand WITH the grain of the wood… and your whole goal here is to just get it smooth and take away any splinters. On new wood like this, sanding isn’t a long process.

3. Now wipe off the sawdust so you have a clean surface to work with. It may sound silly, but this is a GREAT use for those unmatched socks that the dryer orphans (widows?).

4. Once you have it sanded down to smooth natural wood it is time to put your stain on! There is a product called pre-stain which I have used a few times, and would definitely recommend it for nicer pieces of furniture or fancier stain jobs. But these were just shelves that I wanted to have a more rustic look to, so I skipped that step. (and since I am HIGHLY impatient… I almost always skip this step) Now its stain time…

I keep these foam brushes in varying sizes in my garage because they are SUPER cheap and can be used for a lot of different things. But they are great for staining because stain–it STAINS. (I know… rocket science here people). So to keep from ruining other good brushes… I use disposable ones. When you are putting the stain on, always stain with the grain of the wood. See how you can see my brushstrokes in the picture below? I just start in one corner and move my way across the board, going down as you go.

You want enough stain to saturate the wood, but not so much that you have large puddles on the surface. The picture below shows pretty well how much stain is on them. Follow the directions on your particular brand of stain, but Varthane says leave 5-15 minutes. I’m slow enough at this that usually by the time I get to the end of staining, I can start wiping it off.

I don’t have any ‘in progress’ wiping them down shots because when I do this… my hands are COVERED in stain and stain+nice camera=disaster. But when you are wiping them down, just make sure you wipe any inconsistently dark spots away. I usually wipe in a mostly linear fashion, but if there is a spot that looks funny or clearly still has stain on the surface I wipe in a circular motion… like an old car wash commercial… Wax on, wax off. OH and I usually use what seems to be my never-ending supply of old t-shirts for this process. One t-shirt usually is sufficient for a coat of stain (depending on the size of the project) and I feel like it is a good use of all those shirts I don’t need anymore… plus, bonus… they’re free! If you don’t have an un-ending supply of t-shirts, HD or Lowe’s will sell shop rags for this kind of thing.

And Voila! nicely stained shelves (after 4-6 hours of drying, and then 24 hours to fully cure)!!

I frequently follow this up with a coat of polyurethane to seal it or protect it from water, but chose to leave these bare. If your color isn’t dark enough for you, you can always apply a second and third coat, just check the can for drying and recoat times. (usually at least 4 hours between coats).

These babies hung in my bonus room when they were finished (see top of post for a link of what they look like all hung up!)

Check back tomorrow and I’ll show you the easiest way to get all that nasty stain off of your hands.

Filed Under: Wood

Up on the Shelf

October 14, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

My next step in the bonus room upgrade was to hang shelves on the wall. If you remember from this post there is a wall behind where the couch was that is large and blank. It made the most sense for us to put the television on that wall and move the couches over to the far wall with the window. Since we upgraded the dresser to put the TV on I thought shelving would look best on the wall, fill the space, and give us some additional storage for games. We don’t use this room much, but I’m hoping it’ll be a good place to play some board games. Eventually it’ll be a kids game room, but for now its just another living space. We love board games and for our wedding we registered for quite a few games, so we have a pretty extensive board game collection. I thought they would look pretty cute on open shelving and decided to continue the stained dark wood trend so we bought some black track shelving from Home Depot and 3-6′ 1″x12″ boards to stain for shelving.

I used my leftover Varthane Kona stain… I’ll be posting a tutorial with all my staining tips later this week. But one quick coat on both sides of the board and we were good to go. Since I am going for the ‘rustic industrial’ look in this room and they won’t be heavily used (i.e. a table top) I didn’t put anything over the stain to seal it.

I thought it was pretty funny that these shelves from Home Depot came with silver screws and little black stickers to cover them up… high class! But it works, from far away you can’t see them.

I love the way they frame the television. In hindsight I wish I’d hung them just a bit lower, but I still love the way it looks. And the rearrangement of the furniture has made the whole room feel better. And HEY look… we folded our laundry! And don’t worry… I’ll get some pictures put in these frames eventually.

Here’s the update on my list of things to do in the room:

~~paint numbers on an old dresser from Master bedroom for TV stand~~
~~hang shelves~~
make curtains
~~rearrange furniture~~
change out the light fixture (I bought a new light fixture but its backordered… boo)

And I added an item: