Back to the "Sure I'll Paint That" Series

For regular readers of this blog - and I know there are thousands of you out there - you'll remember the series I did back in August when I decided to tackle refinishing a couple of tables we have here at our house. I spent the better part of the first week of my vacation working on breaking them down, sanding, priming, sanding, painting, re-assembling, sanding, and painting again. But the end result was very good - my wife was very pleased (guys, once you get married that becomes the standard for whether many of the things in your life are a success or not).

Shortly after that I was laying on the couch watching TV (our TV sits on one of the two tables I re-finished and the other one sits next to it) and it occurred to me that what I needed to do was add a lower shelf on the larger table to match the one the smaller table has. Reason? We need a good place to store DVDs and PS2 games that doesn't clutter the rest of the table.

So I climbed into the attic to find I had the needed piece of plywood that would become the shelf itself left over from building the smaller table a few years ago. This meant all I needed was some additional black paint, a small piece of 2"x2", and some screws (along with brushes and a drop cloth) to do this small project. A quick jaunt to Lowe's took care of that.

Observation: I needed about 8oz. of paint, but the smallest amount they would sell me to match what I'd bought before was a quart. I'm already looking for other things that might need to be painted kettle black to use up the rest of it. The two cheap bar stools sitting behind me right now are likely candidates, but the thought of sanding (3 times) all of the tiny rungs and legs of those makes me want to hurl - and they don't come apart like the tables did.

On Tuesday while I was in Vinita, dad and I cut the plywood and 2"x2" to the sizes I needed. On Wednesday I did the rough sanding, priming, fine sanding, and first coat of black on them. Then on Friday I did some measuring so that I knew precisly how to install the blocks (from the 2"x2") that will attach the shelf to the legs of the table. Then I attached the blocks to the shelf, did the finish sanding and applied the final coat of black paint.

At present the shelf is in the garage drying. I hope to install it tomorrow afternoon - just in time for Christmas. Merry Christmas, Wife! Oh, I was supposed to buy you something? I just thought I was supposed to surprise you (Robin Sigars!).

This project has taken much less time and been more enjoyable - the second time around tends to be. I did comment to my wife yesterday that it would have been handy to have a cordless drill and sander so I didn't have to keep dragging an extension cord around! She rolled her eyes. I wonder if that means anythings?