A Fairly Productive Week

Overall, my health has been quite miserable and very unstable for the past few months.  What really pushed my health into this bad spell was the fireplace project during the few weeks in December. I was in a rush to get the fireplace to an operating condition before Christmas arrived. Systemic Mastocytosis causes extreme, overwhelming fatigue and this is especially so whenever I over do it and use more energy than my health allows. I'm still trying to recover from pushing myself to finish that project in time for Christmas...  but, the fireplace really is nice.

Unfortunately, although "really nice", that fireplace is still not completely finished.  I managed to work on this project about an hour each day this past week.  It still wore me out each day... imagine just a quick hour of light, easy work requiring bedtime immediately...

Despite the need for sleep everyday, over the course of the week I managed to fill some open edges, sand, fill some more, sand even more, and then apply another four coats of satin polyurethane.

I didn't get a chance to smooth out the edges nor the grain of the mantle before Christmas arrived so it has been rather rough. The edges also had some gaps along the entire edge but, as you can see in the photo, that edge is looking nice and smooth now.

In all, the mantle now sports six coats of polyurethane.  I think it will need another two to four coats and then it will look beautiful.  The fireplace itself only needs another coat or two and some very minor trim work to be finished.  

The great thing, however, is that I managed to have a productive week even though it was only about five hours of work altogether.

I hope this is a trend in my energy level and overall stability which I see more often for the coming months...