where are your gloves and your helmet?

And the bed is done!

I still have to do the nightstand up, but I'm going to give it a day or two before I work on that- or maybe wait until after Easter, just to let the room air out. If you wanna see the whole process to date, it's under my furniture finishing project on Tumblr.

I'm not entirely sure about the bed being completely complete, mind. There was a whole set of unused screws that I haven't figured out what to do with, and I got under the bed to look for holes and/or points to put them. I'm gonna sleep in the bed tonight and see how it holds up and if there's a problem I'll know- and tomorrow or later in the week I can go to Bostonwood and look at the showroom bed to see if it's screwed together, and if so, see where it has screws that I hadn't placed on mine.

Meanwhile I also made soap last night. It's in the closet curing now- has to sit for several weeks before it's really finished. I cut a sliver off the bars to test, though, and it sudses up nicely. Hopefully this is a good sign.

The headboard's nearly done! Ultrafine sanding and waxing tomorrow, and then I can start on the rest of the bed- which shouldn't take long, I'm not French polishing that- and then worry about how to get it all moved into my room and the mattress out of the way for long enough to disassemble the old bed and put the new together. Then I can work on the nightstand to go with it!

(More pictures are in my photobucket library for the project, as I tried to document each major step along the way.)

I spent most of yesterday sanding things. The bed proper and the headboard took up quite a few pieces- two separate leg pieces, two separate rail bits, three pieces for the slats where the mattress will rest, and then the whole headboard. Most of the stuff just got 220 grit sandpaper, but the parts I figured might be visible are going to be subjected to French polish technique so I went over those with:

- 220-grit sandpaper
- fine grit sponge (equivalent to 320 grit sandpaper)
- extra fine grit sponge (up to around 400 grit, I think)
- really fine grit sponge (went up to about 500 grit, I think)
- a clean painter's rag to remove the sawdust
- a damp rag to raise some of the wood hairs
- 220-grit again to remove what felt like the hairs
- clean rag again
- a tack cloth this time to remove more of the sawdust
- a rag moistened in denatured alcohol to remove the rest of the sawdust

Worth noting: did you take high school chemistry? Did they teach you that if you have to sniff a sample you shouldn't put it under your nose, but put it near your nose and wave the fumes towards your face with your hand so you wouldn't get smacked with the worst of the stuff if it turned out to be painful or dangerous? I did. And yet I somehow forgot to do this when I was checking the rag to make sure it had enough alcohol on it. Don't do that.

Anyway, after the alcohol rag I let things dry a bit, then came back and put the water-based pre-stain conditioner on the headboard and both of the leg pieces. (There's only so much room to dry these things out properly, so the slat pieces and the rails will get done later.) I was happy when I left the room and spent some time playing XCOM: Enemy Within. Then I went back in and...

Well, the conditioner was nice and all, but it seemed to have raised wood hairs again. I nearly cried. I'd been wearing a respirator mask to keep the sawdust out all day, and my arms were sore in places, and I'd gotten the wood as smooth as bone, and now this? I did my best to go over things again with the 220-grit paper, then got out the stain and a staining pad and dosed the headboard and the legs anyway and wiped the extra off fifteen minutes later. I'll see if it needs sanding again tonight before I start anything with the shellac, but by the time the staining was done yesterday it was past midnight and the front room smelled like New Jersey.

(Note: ordinarily I wouldn't fuss over this, but I wanted the headboard smooth enough to do proper French polish on. I still do. We'll see how it goes.)

At least the majority of the sanding is out of the way, but good Lord that's a pain in the tuchus, finding that out. No pictures yet. I'll try and get some tonight.

Didn't get any work done on the new furniture last night. I was too exhausted when I got home from work to do anything much more complex than mixing pumpkin puree with Shula's cat food- I'd underestimated the amount of caffeine in Starbucks iced coffee and consumed two of them late in the afternoon on Sunday, and sleep was not my friend that night... anyway. I'll be working on the nightstand when I get home tonight, I think. I've already sanded it a good bit and put on the stain prep. I'll probably go over it with the fine sanding sponge (equivalent to 320-400 grit sandpaper) when I've put the stain on and let it dry, since I plan on French polishing the thing and that's supposed to be part of the process. I made a point of buying a particulate respirator mask at the hardware store this weekend, because the finer grits result in a LOT more sawdust and I think my lungs have had enough crap to deal with, thank you very much.

Will post links to 'before' pics shortly. My browser's being annoying.

ETA: ( Arrival day pictures behind the cut. )