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

DIY Centerpiece Box

October 2, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

When I was thinking about what I wanted to put on my dining table for fall (about the only place that I decorate seasonally), I saw a table with a rustic box in the middle with candles and leaves sort of spilling out of it. I pinned it here (speaking of… if you want to follow me on pinterest, instagram, etc just click the circles over to the right –>) but whoever originally pinned it didn’t link it to a tutorial or other projects… but you know me… I thought: I can make that! And it turns out it was super easy! The actual construction of the box took me about 15 minutes over my lunch break.

Supplies:

2- 1″x4″x8′ pieces of wood (I usually use pine because it is cheap and readily available)
Nail Gun (or if you don’t have one you can just use a good ole hammer and nails)
Miter Saw or Circular Saw
220 grit sandpaper
Stain color of your choice
Brush to apply the stain
Rag to wipe it off

The first step is to cut your wood down to size, I measured my table and decided I wanted mine to be a little over 40″ long. I decided to cut my long pieces to 40″ and then add the end pieces on, making my entire box 41.5″ long. (Did you know that boards aren’t actually the size they are called? For instance 2x4s are actually about 1.5″ x 3.5″ If you want a quick cheatsheet I have pinned one here.)

So first I measured one board to 40″. And see how the left hand side of my marker line is at 40″? When I cut, I want to be sure that my saw blade is lined up on the left hand side of that line.

When you cut wood, a saw blade will take away some of the wood when it cuts (mine takes about 1/8th of an inch). So you want to be careful to be sure that you aren’t cutting on the side of the line that you want to use so that your piece isn’t 1/8th of an inch short. So you can see in the picture above, I lined my saw blade up to the left hand side of the line and that is where I made my cut. But I have a secret when I’m making something like this box. When I have to cut multiple pieces where it is more important that they are equal than the right length (I’d rather all my pieces be exactly the same length than be an exact 40″ ) I measure and cut one. Then I take the next board, line it up on my saw and put the first piece on top of it like this:

And as long as I’ve made sure the ends are perfectly lined up, its an easy way to ‘mark’ my next board. I just use the teeth of the blade to hold the board while I remove the top piece before cutting. After the top board is removed, I can hold the board while I make my cut.

Next I marked and cut my two end pieces (ignore the board on the left that is leaning… its hard to take pictures, mark and hold the board all at the same time… but I promise this was even when I marked it!).

Next I took my nail gun and placed nails all along the sides and the ends until it was secure. (I put about 6 across the sides and 5 on each end) Now, its ready for sanding and stain!

For sanding, I didn’t do much, I wanted this to look pretty rustic, so I just sanded down the corners so they weren’t quite as sharp and went over the wood pretty lightly with 220 grit.

We had just finished the stage project and had used several different shades of Varthane’s stain. The darkest color we had used was the color I wanted for this box. I was pretty sure it was Kona, but my husband SWORE it was dark walnut and that Kona went on dark, but wiped off as a gray, ashy color. And in Minwax I had used the dark walnut before and liked it, so we thought we would give that a shot. Well… this is how it turned out:

It was WAY more orange than I wanted (although thanks to night-time staining in my garage its not actually as orange as this picture makes it look). So I decided to go back to HD and get some Kona stain to try it out. And voila… exactly the color I was looking for:

I actually think it was a good thing that I stained it first in the Dark Walnut, I think it gave the color a little more depth, so all was not wasted! I’ll try to do a more detailed staining post sometime next month (I have another big table build coming up soon!). But for now here are my quick and easy tips for staining:

Use foam brushes (like the ones I used here) to apply the stain
Always apply and wipe stain in the direction of the wood grain
READ AND FOLLOW instructions. Every stain is different on how long to leave stain on before wiping it off, and how long in between coats, etc. But it says… RIGHT THERE ON THE CAN!
I use old t-shirts, unmatched socks, whatever I can find to wipe it off… stain ruins everything cloth it touches, so I just use whatever I’m trying to get rid of.
When you are done, you will have stain on your hands… olive oil/vegetable oil will take it right off. But then you have to use dish soap to get the vegetable oil off. I usually keep a bottle of cheap vegetable oil in the garage to use for this step since there is something gross about opening my good bottle of cooking olive oil with stain coated hands. Not that I’ve ever done that…

If you want it to be shiny or water resistant, now is the time to add a Polyurethane coat to the top of it, but since I wanted this project to be more rough and rustic, I left it as is! I think it looks perfect on the top of my table!

Filed Under: Decorating, Wood

Dining Room Table

September 30, 2013 By amusingmjblog 8 Comments

Do you have those friends who just ‘get you’? They enjoy the same things, put up with your intense craziness and are always up to help you out when you need something? For Reese and I, some of our best couple friends have been Kory and Julie. They were both in our wedding and we love spending time with them.

Kory and I are kindred spirits when it comes to projects. Both of our spouses love the fruits of our labors, but they tolerate more than love our project driven natures. But when we all get together and start talking about projects, we tend to spur each other’s crazy project ideas on. So when they moved into their house last year and needed a table, I gladly went along with their idea to build one. From scratch. Despite the fact that I had only built a small simple communion table for the church before and Kory had no experience building tables, we were confident we could give it a go (and if it ended up terribly, we were out less than $150 dollars). And unfortunately since this build was a year ago I only started taking pictures once I was sure this table would actually function and stand up on its own. But clearly, it did:

Julie, Kory and I emailed back and forth for about a week about designs and I found some Ana-White table plans and sent them a few different options. We talked about what we thought we could feasibly do, and picked the X-Table that Ana-White created. If you want to build a table like this for yourself, Ana-White’s plans are AMAZING and easy to follow. Click here if you want to see those plans. Together we came up with a materials list for them to purchase before our build day.

Bright and early Saturday morning Reese and I showed up at their house with all my tools in tow and we quickly set about following the plans. The plans call for you to build the two X legs first, so we started following their direction carefully. We secured every board with both wood glue and screws to make sure it would be extra solid. (For the most part we built these two from the top down while they were upside down, putting screws in the bottom side so they would be less visible, so in some of these pictures these are upside down).

When it came down to the bottom of the legs there were two options: cut the board at a 45° angle, or cut it at multiple angles and then round it off with a belt sander. We both liked the look of the rounded edges better than the harsher line of the 45° angle. But since neither of us had ever tried this before (this was one of my first big projects with my baby) we found some scrap wood and decided to try it out and see if we could get it to work first. And sure enough it was EASY. We drew out the curve we thought we wanted and then just started changing the degree of the cut to match it. If I remember correctly we did about 4 cuts at varying angles and then Kory took the belt sander to it to smooth out any rough parts and make it more curved. From there we just repeated the process on the other end of that board and then made 3 more matching boards. The most important part here is to make sure the edges of your board are still the same length as the board below (or above) for a seamless transition. The picture below shows what that curve looks like when the table is finished.

At this point in time we had two freestanding X legs for either end of the table. Now it was time to build the top. We had 4 2×8’s that were 8 feet long. The plans after all called for an 8’ table. But as we were starting to build the top of the table I looked at the pile of 8’ boards on the floor and said… This is going to be a MASSIVE table… are you sure it’s going to fit in your dining room? So we decided to go measure again… and sure enough… 8’ would have left little to no room for chairs at the head and foot of the table. The good news was we didn’t have any of the long pieces cut or assembled yet, so we just took off an extra foot of the table to make it more of an appropriate size for their room. And here is the first and most important rule of DIY-ing (besides safety of course) MEASURE TWICE! (In our table the V boards touch, while in Ana-White’s plans they have about a foot gap in between)

Once we had decided on that, we began the assembly of the top. Using my Kreg Jig, we drilled pocket holes in the bottom of the 2x8s and secured them together with a small bead of glue between each board (we didn’t have clamps big enough to go across two boards, but trusted that the screws would keep them together enough to let the glue dry). This is what the top of the table looks like:

Next we secured the cross beam and the V boards (I’m sure they have a technical name and I’m equally sure I don’t know what it is) to the end pieces. And this is where we left it for the evening. Just to get a good visual we put the top on the bottom pieces to take a few pictures and see what it would look like.

diningtable12

Not bad for a day’s work and about $150 worth of supplies! The whole project with stain and all was less than $200 dollars all in, which is pretty good for a 7’ long solid wood table!

The next day we came back to finish up the project, Kory had used the belt sander to sand the top smooth. An un-evenness in the boards or flaws were sanded smooth. It takes a lot of sanding, but this step is SO WORTH IT for a nice smooth top. He also used it to round off the harsher edges of the top boards so that you can easily rest your forearms on the table without hurting them!

After we left, Kory and Julie did an ‘antiquing’ treatment Kory had read about online with steel wool, vinegar and tea. It is very similar to this tutorial. Then they stained the table with Minwax’s Dark Walnut and a couple coats of Polyurethane.

I think this table looks FANTASTIC and is a great addition to their home and we have gotten to enjoy the fruits of our labor with several good meals at this table! And didn’t she style it so well! I love this room… it is so happy and cheerful!! PS… All of these pictures were taken this past weekend, so this is what the table looks like almost 10 months after we built it!

An upclose of the legs:

Filed Under: Most Popular, Wood

How to Stain

DIY Centerpiece Box

Dining Room Table

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