Finishing Wood in Batches
All these delays in our home renovations has really snowballed at this point.
My health and the weather were nowhere near in sync and, as a result, so many projects were delayed. Whenever the weather was good, my health was miserable so I could not accomplish anything. Whenever my health was well enough to accomplish a few things, the weather was so lousy that we couldn't get anything accomplished.
Now, the temperatures are below freezing every night and not much higher than freezing during the days. These cold temperatures makes finish work such as staining and polyurethaning impossible to do outdoors.
Unfortunately, I have a lot of wood to stain and polyurethane. Since I can't move all this wood outdoors, I am stuck trying to get it all stained and polyurethaned indoors without ruining our floors, walls, furniture, etc. This means I am stuck inside the small room I am currently renovating.
I started staining wood today... I managed to stain half of the wide planks for the ceiling before I ran out of space. I quickly realized that I will need to do all this finish work in batches. On the positive side, while all these long planks were laid out on the unfinished floor, I was able to polyurethane them too... two coats of poly, actually.
Tomorrow I'll stack these long stained planks in another room and then stain the shorter pieces of planking in the unfinished room... apply two coats of poly... then, on Thursday, I can do the same procedure with the trim... then, on Friday, I can do the same procedure on two nightstands.
What is frustrating is that my health is fairly stable right now... my spinal injuries are killing me and getting worse through this work but my health is relatively stable right now... yet, I am now severely limited due to cold weather and lack of indoor (heated) space. The chances of my health remaining stable long enough to get through all these batches of finish work are slim to none so... I expect even more delays in getting this new bedroom renovation project completed.
So, while I was waiting for the first batch of stain to dry so I could then start applying polyurethane, I decided to grab my camera and head outdoors...
I've been doing a lot of practicing with manual focus lenses lately and today was no different. I picked up an amazing portrait lens recently... sharp as a tack... a very fast lens at f1.4... but I really haven't had a chance to test it out. I'd love to test it in a studio portrait session or two but I never seem to have anyone around to shoot during the day whenever I have a few minutes (and a little energy, and good health). Instead, I headed outdoors to test this portrait lens on nature...
As I wrote in a previous blog post about an old manual focus Konica lens I found online, trying to focus on a thin blade of grass can be tough to do especially when trying to shoot with the aperture wide open (which then gives you only a razor-thin section of depth which is in focus). Today's practice was even tougher with this portrait lens because the aperture opens even wider producing even thinner depth of field.
Just like I wrote about my Konica 40mm lens, I'm liking this portrait lens as well! This lens is exceptionally sharp and the characteristics of this lens are very appealing. I'm actually itching to spend a few days just shooting!
In the meantime, although completely unrelated to the woodworking finish work I am trying to accomplish and the primary purpose of this blog entry, here are a few photos from today's very short walk around the backyard...
My health and the weather were nowhere near in sync and, as a result, so many projects were delayed. Whenever the weather was good, my health was miserable so I could not accomplish anything. Whenever my health was well enough to accomplish a few things, the weather was so lousy that we couldn't get anything accomplished.
Now, the temperatures are below freezing every night and not much higher than freezing during the days. These cold temperatures makes finish work such as staining and polyurethaning impossible to do outdoors.
Unfortunately, I have a lot of wood to stain and polyurethane. Since I can't move all this wood outdoors, I am stuck trying to get it all stained and polyurethaned indoors without ruining our floors, walls, furniture, etc. This means I am stuck inside the small room I am currently renovating.
I started staining wood today... I managed to stain half of the wide planks for the ceiling before I ran out of space. I quickly realized that I will need to do all this finish work in batches. On the positive side, while all these long planks were laid out on the unfinished floor, I was able to polyurethane them too... two coats of poly, actually.
Tomorrow I'll stack these long stained planks in another room and then stain the shorter pieces of planking in the unfinished room... apply two coats of poly... then, on Thursday, I can do the same procedure with the trim... then, on Friday, I can do the same procedure on two nightstands.
What is frustrating is that my health is fairly stable right now... my spinal injuries are killing me and getting worse through this work but my health is relatively stable right now... yet, I am now severely limited due to cold weather and lack of indoor (heated) space. The chances of my health remaining stable long enough to get through all these batches of finish work are slim to none so... I expect even more delays in getting this new bedroom renovation project completed.
So, while I was waiting for the first batch of stain to dry so I could then start applying polyurethane, I decided to grab my camera and head outdoors...
I've been doing a lot of practicing with manual focus lenses lately and today was no different. I picked up an amazing portrait lens recently... sharp as a tack... a very fast lens at f1.4... but I really haven't had a chance to test it out. I'd love to test it in a studio portrait session or two but I never seem to have anyone around to shoot during the day whenever I have a few minutes (and a little energy, and good health). Instead, I headed outdoors to test this portrait lens on nature...
As I wrote in a previous blog post about an old manual focus Konica lens I found online, trying to focus on a thin blade of grass can be tough to do especially when trying to shoot with the aperture wide open (which then gives you only a razor-thin section of depth which is in focus). Today's practice was even tougher with this portrait lens because the aperture opens even wider producing even thinner depth of field.
Just like I wrote about my Konica 40mm lens, I'm liking this portrait lens as well! This lens is exceptionally sharp and the characteristics of this lens are very appealing. I'm actually itching to spend a few days just shooting!
In the meantime, although completely unrelated to the woodworking finish work I am trying to accomplish and the primary purpose of this blog entry, here are a few photos from today's very short walk around the backyard...
Comments
Post a Comment