Hansome or handy...

There is a philosopher who lives in Canada and his name is Red Green. He is in charge of the Possum Lodge and he is full of such wit and wisdom as the subject of this post. Over the course of the past few weeks, I like to think that I was pretty handy in supporting our kitchen remodeling project. As followers of this blog can attest, I spent some time staining all the trim that was used in the aforementioned kitchen. The remaining stain was to come in handy as I still had to stain the following:

1) The handrail leading to the basement
2) The pub table
3) The stools
4) The door to our main bathroom

When we had our main bathroom remodeled last year, we had the professionals at HWC Homeworks replace the door. The extant door was old and tired and needed to be retired. Well, the new door was installed, but it remained unfinished. I kept thinking to myself, "I need to do something with that door." With all the new found staining knowledge I gained working on the trim, I felt that now was the time to take the door off its hinges, stain and then seal the door. Since Deirdre was going to be away for a couple of days for a conference, the timing to stain the door could not have been better.

I removed the door from its hinges and started to stain it on Friday night. Since I had to stain both sides of the door, I projected that it would take me 3-4 days to complete the task. It would take this long because I needed to stain one side of the door, let it dry (which usually takes 24 hours), then stain the other side and let that dry. Once the stain was dry I could apply some clearcoat polyurethane to seal the door. Well, the weather the past few days was quite supportive of this project because the stain dried very quickly and in a little more than a day I was ready to apply the clearcoat. I am happy to report that the door is back in place and it looks great.

On to the other staining projects. As part of the kitchen project, we replaced a swing door with a pocket door. The installation of the pocket door required that a new handrail be installed. The new handrail looked great, but it, too, needed to be stained. The morning I removed the handrail, took it into the garage and went to work. The handrail has essentially two sides, so completing this project is also probably going to take me 3 days. The weather is currently quite amenable for staining outdoors as the high temperature here in the western edges of the Enchanted Mitten was 81F. I plan on using the garage to complete the staining and sealing of the handrail. If everything goes as planned, the handrail will be installed on Tuesday before Deirdre returns.



The final part of my staining evolution consists of the table and chairs that will fit nicely into our breakfast nook. We purchased the table and two stools last week at the Wood Source, and they were unfinished. The table is made of adler and the stools are made of parawood. I did a little prep work to rough up the wood for the stain and I applied the first coat of stain to the top of the table and the stand. I will have to flip over the table top and stain the underside of the table. The wood seemed to take the stain well and I am hoping to have the table completed in a couple of days. My plan is to start on the stools tomorrow.

Yep, as Red Green says, "If the women do not find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."