Little by little we're turning the house into a home. My wife had an image in her head on how she wanted the living room to look. So, she drew it up. We did our best to match it. Pretty proud of it myself. But boy did I get an education during it. Before: (Wifes wording - "Not cozy") How she wanted it to look: ("Cozy" - and yes she included the bucks on the drawing. I was mighty happy about that.) So the first thing was to build a shelf. Education #1 - (It's not a mantle....it's a shelf.) I kept calling it a mantle. But the misses told me mantles are only over the fire place, shelves are not. Seeing how we don't have a fire place, it is a shelf. So now that my terminology was correct, I proceeded to build the shelf. I went to Lowes picked up some yellow pine boards. Education #2 - (Staining) Well...I knew she wanted everything to match the coffee table in the living room so I had to pick up some stain. How hard could this be? It's like paint, right? I can do this...no problem. I wandered over to the stain isle. (Keep in mind i've never stained before, nor been around anyone while they stained. 100% winging at the moment). I started looking for the color of stain that I wanted (dark brown, easy enough). BINGO...Kona...looks dark enough. But wait....wait a second. What in the heck is water based? And wait, there's another Kona color that says...oil based? What's wood conditioner? And polyurethane? Why are these in the stain isle...? So, I do the next logical thing...stand and stare, until it makes sense... Nope, not working. Okay, plan B, pick up the stain and read the directions. I got lost somewhere in the "sanding step" (step 1). I need to sand? About this time I figured I was way in over my head with the staining...I couldn't just "wing" it. I needed to go home, read a little about it, plan another course of action and then execute! To make a long story short, I learned that I needed to sand, stain and use polyurethane. The next day I head back to Lowes to grab the rest of the supplies. (Shout out to the old gentleman that helped me not pick the 2-in-1 stain/polyurethane, it turned out great. This guy and I talked for 30 minutes, at least, from his staining experience, to mine, back to his furniture building days and then to his gardening days (present) for his wife and neighbor. I love running into good-ole boys, no matter what age.) Here's some pictures of how the shelf turned out. (took 2 days from dry to finish). Now that was done, my wife and I needed to find a mirror to go over it. Her parents surprised us on her birthday and bought her one. (30x60). PERFECT! We hung everything on Sunday. Here's how it turned out.
Congrats it looks great! Now you just need to sneak a couple sheds up on that shelf, it looks perfect for that. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
She likes that too. Turned out great for the mounts. Now we have to figure out where to put 2 turkey fans and a wood duck.
