Well I’m on a roll so why not do more. Maybe it’ll help quell some of the weekend boredom that I’ve been feeling recently. So while the front door was drying I disassembled our kitchen table and carried the butcher block top to the garage to work on it.
We’ve had this table since Poughkeepsie. We bought it unfinished and I stained the top and painted the bottom white. It’s seen a lot of action from numerous family meals to baking and cooking to decorating Christmas cookies to assembling puzzles to so many other things. After all that it’s been looking a bit weary. The top especially has been showing wear with both the stain and the polyurethane wearing off in spots. So while I waited for the front door to dry I sanded the top down with my orbital sander to bare wood. Note: next time I should separate my drying work from my sanding work – oh well nothing was damaged beyond repair. Afterwards Katie and I stained the top. This time I choose to use the red oak stain which I had just used for the front door instead of the original lighter fruitwood. Since the table was so old it just drank in the stain. Next I applied the first coat of polyurethane, and it’s now drying for six hours before I sand it again and put on the next coat. The “prep” sanding really roughed up the surface so the “between-coats” sanding is really needed.
More to follow…