Last weekend Pim helped me sanding the rest of the table top. He did most of the work. After removing all of the varnish, he sanded it with a finer grit and no vacuum cleaner, and I picked up as much of the sawdust as possible. Then I mixed it with white glue and filled in cracks. I am still not finished doing this.



Today I've been working on the table all day. My hips hurt so much I can barely walk >_< I just took an anti-infflamatory and let's hope it works.

( This is a text and picture heavy entry )



( ... more )

Now I am off to take a warm, warm shower. Then I hope I still have enough energy left to clean up the mess, but I do not want to fuck up my hips even more, so we will see.

I've started working on the dining table again. I don't think I ever posted here about it? We started to sand it some months ago, the varnish was quite hard and difficult to sand off. I didn't want to use a varnish remover.

Today I sanded the rest of varnish from one third of the table (I'm dividing it in three parts to work on for three days) with a harsh grit, and then with a finer grit and no vacuum cleaner attached, as to collect some saw(?)dust to mix with white wood glue to fill in cracks later on. This was a tip from the clerk at the hardware store.



On a side note, the paid account for this journal expired some time ago (I still don't know why the automatic payment didn't work) and today I went to renew it for a year, I did... while I was logged in with my innershelter account :( stupid, stupid me. I've logged a help ticket and I hope this can be solved, I cannot afford to pay for another account, and for some reason this went back to an account with ads :/ And I can make absolutely no use of the benefits of a paid account in innershelter, it is completely useless.
I am having a terrible day, I shouldn't do anything remotely important when I'm like this.

Update: I got a refund!! :) now I have to remember tomorrow and purchase the subscription on this account.

Today I've been working a little bit more on the chair. Little, because I started having pain in my wrist and I didn't want to get hurt again...

I saw and filed the rail, gave it the right shape, and also have been sanding a couple of the rails. This is gonna be a slow project...

As I mentioned in the previous entry about this project, er... 3 months ago... "One of the sticks was damaged and broke into the casing (...) which is too bad. I've been emptying the "casing" with a tool I don't know the english name of. It is slow and annoying because of my arm and because I would need another of these tools in a smaller size, too. The stick will need some structural repair."

Mainly because of physical problems I stopped working on this, and then, like everything else, I forgot about it :P Despite all the pieces have been lying around the house :P

Today I decided to advance a little. I asked my boyfriend Pim for help (he is home in sick leave) and in a moment he finished emptying the "casing":



I saw(ed ?) a "channel" in the "stick", adjusted the width and straightened the walls, I found some beech sticks (I don't have any oak or chestnut wood around, but beech is hard too) and pieced the missing part with them. I also filled the extra space the channel made with the stick I saw(ed ?) off first, from the same wood. I glued it all togheter and now it is drying. In the picture the glued stick is compared to the other twin stick. It looks like a mess now I guess ;P It will be cleaned up and shaped once it is dry:

This one is gonna be picture heavy because I don't feel like doing cuts, not after the big effort of typing this almost single-handedly :P

Thursday, being holiday, I kept myself busy re-polishing the vanity I got a few months ago off Ebay.



I got a product for removing old wax (some sort of very volatile solvent that made the whole house stink) and gave a couple of layers of medium coloured oak wax.



And the some mattine varnish, which seems a liquid mix of shellac and wax. It is very difficult to apply (dries immediately, and I haven't found yet the right tools to apply it...) but I love it's sublty glossy sheen.



The last couple of weeks or so I've been working on one of the chairs we rescued off the street in Brussels, while we were, coveniently, driving a van to go and pick up more furniture we got off Ebay. One of the chairs in original state can be glimpsed in the top picture next to the vanity. Dirtyyy.

At first I thought they were oak, but now that I have sanded one of them and seen the grain, I think the wood might be chestnut. But I am no expert. The carved panel on the seat seems to be another kind of wood, reddish and with a very fine grain. I have no idea what it might be. The chairs are vaguely art deco, they could be from the 30's. The leatherette seats have been more recently added. Crappily.

One of the chairs was more damaged, the carving split down the center, and it has been tried to fix from wiggling with the wrong kind of glue and angled metal plates with an assortment of screws. Crappily. It still wiggled. I removed all the screws and plates and dissasembled it in great part. As well as I could since I cannot make full use of my left arm and hand (actually, typing is very annoying). I took out the leatherette seat, the seat board (it will have to be replaced), unscrew the seat frame, pulled out the front legs and structure from the back legs and reclining part. One of the sticks was damaged and broke into the casing (I don't know english "technical" terms for many of these things) which is too bad. I've been emptying the "casing" with a tool I don't know the english name of. It is slow and annoying because of my arm and because I would need another of these tools in a smaller size, too. The stick will need some structural repair.

So I've been working mostly on the back piece. I sanded it with a machine (where possible) and by hand.





I decided to dye the carving red (mahogany) and later make seats of dark red silk to match. I also wanted to gild parts (recesses) of the carving, but today I decided against it and gilded something else. I glued and filled in the cracks in the split carving another day, but it swell and split again today due to the humidity of the dye.
It was difficult to find materials and tools I would have quickly found in Barcelona. The city is big and I know where to find anything. And I know what I need. But here, the city is smaller, everything is more expensive, and of course in Dutch. I borrowed books in the library to try and find the terms. So far I have found most of what I need. Still a few things to go. Yesterday we found the mahogany dye, by sheer luck and cheap, it was starting to worry me.



Today I used this water soluble dye, sanded the last bits and gilded the "channeled" parts. I think I overdid it with the dye, once waxed and polished, it is too dark. I'll have this in mind for the other chair (I am taking this chair as a learning experience) wich will go with the vanity. I gave a few layers and tried to make the roses darker.



They were, but once waxed I cannot see the difference. I also used anilin "watercolor" to make them more red. Or try. I also painted with it over the gilding, to give a reddish hue, also to the wood through the cracks.

I guilded a bit carelessly to achieve a cracked and antiqued look.







Afterwards I waxed (I'm impatient like that and wanted to see how it looks. Too dark) it with the medium oak wax, which is a bit dark, but it doesn't really darken much and I am not gonna get an entire new pot of neutral for these little plates. And I applied mattine varnish with a brush, it looks prety glossy now. I also put some over the gilding, to protect it, it is not real gold. But it got so dark outside that the pics suck, I'll show more later in daylight.

Today I started sanding the "wood paste" I made according to hardware store clerck... I should have tried this before going on crack filling spree. The paste has hardened and darkened a lot. I have to sand it off with a harsh sandpaper in the machine, and insisting a lot, it is gummy and difficult to sand off, and at some points the filling comes out of the thin cracks in a thin strip when sanding the rest! argh. I am then losing my time and losing wood to top it off. So now it is gonna take a lot of time to sand this crap off and fill the holes again with something that works, and then sand again. This is how the glue+sawdust mix has hardened:



When sanded, if it doesn't peel off, it looks like this, quite dark, but I hope not as noticeable once the surface is varnished, therefore darkened. Still, it is way too dark I think:



I have then tried to fill the cracks with the quality wood paste I have, it was much easier to fill the cracks without making a mess all around:



And when sanded (and it sands easily off and nice, I did it by hand in 10 seconds), it is of course too light, because this paste is light oak. I am gonna go and get cherry wood this weekend:



Live and learn, I guess.