Yes, the little known and and even less frequently used "couch coffee completion clause" is being invoked here at Soule Designs. What does it mean? I'm not sure, but before I lose track of this project and jump haphazardly onto some other bright shiny undertaking, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on the completed couch coffee table project...for posterity. That's a whole lotta verbiage, and a pinch of alliteration, to say checkout these coffee table pictures:
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| The table is stained with General Finishes Antique Cherry |
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| Hard to get a good angle without light reflection, but it looks pretty darn good |
I wound up applying five coats of General Finishes Enduro-var to the table top mainly because I kept having to sand pretty heavily between coats to fix self inflicted defects. First, I got a ton of little fibers in the finish using a Handi-painter applicator, so the finish had to be nearly sanded out. Next, I somehow splashed Enduro-var on the fourth (and then final) coat when cleaning up, this necessitated another sanding and a final fifth coat. The Enduro-var is pretty easy to work with so applying coats went fast. I found a good bristle brush to work best, however you have to work fast to avoid getting brush strokes as the finish starts to setup almost immediately. I've used water based polyurethane products before, in fact we finished the floors in our house with Bona Mega, so I knew the cure time was somewhere in the week range. I contacted General Finishes just to get their take on when we could start using the coffee table and quickly got a reply:
Owen it takes a good 2 weeks to be cured, and depending on how quick the coats were put on and how warm it was etc. may take up to a good month to get to optimum hardness and durability. I recommend waiting a good week before you use at all, then light use for the rest of the month. You can put your feet up but I would use coasters for drinks and clean up any spills right away for a good 4 weeks. It is always good to use coasters even after that, and also don't put any plants on the table. Other than that you should be good to go. Use warm water and mild dish detergent for cleaning.
With that info in hand, and since the finish was applied April 30th, we started using the coffee table in earnest on May 7th. The side drawers have been perfect for storing random TV viewing/controlling stuff and best of all they are hidden so burglars will never find our remote controls ;-)
May be a good spot to store random guns, guns, guns too!
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| Clarence Boddicker agrees, and apparently speaks in Comic Sans? |
We have now reached the end of the Soule Designs woodworking queue and will be returning to our regularly scheduled computer art posts momentarily...