Tools of the Trade
Observe closely the 500 and the 501 at the bottom of my cans of Behr Premium Deck, Fence & Siding Weatherproofing Wood Finish…notice the words Transparent on the can to the left and Wood-Toned on the can to the right! Sigh. A recommendation…before beginning a paint or stain project, check your can labels. No harm done! Because I hadn’t tinted my stains, the store will take the ‘opened’ can back. I didn’t so much as dip my brush into the can before I noticed the warm red tint to the wood-toned stain compared to the relatively yellowish tint to the transparent product. (Just thought I’d mention this for any and all stainers out there!) The fence, deck and bench have been successfully completed and it all looks wonderful!
A few observations…the sparrows that pooped on the deck yesterday, will also poop on it today…and likely tomorrow, as well. Try to get your backyard staining done in the shortest number of days possible! In my case, I worked for five mornings straight…this allowed for the bird population to do its ‘dirty’ again and again, making my morning clean-up an integral part of my staining event. Something to think about.
Spider webs and balls of WHAT? Ok, I remember loving the story, Charlotte’s Web by E.B.White. Did any of my readers enjoy that book as much as I did? In fact, one of the reasons I loved teaching Grade five at one point was so that I could read that novel again to a class of students…just so that I could cry again, at the ending.
As I stained the fence, I kept wiping away the balls of fuzz (egg cases) that were tucked into the hidden corners of the fence boards. As I wiped, I thought about Charlotte and her babies.
Another observation…I saw the drips of former staining events. My recommendation is that while staining, keep going back and lightly blending in the drips that just a short while before had been transparent (if you chose transparent stain) because given a little bit of drying time, these will look like this!
Drips
Something else I thought about while staining, was whether or not I wanted to do each individual board from top to bottom and bob up and down continually or tackle the job like this? In the end, I settled on this approach because for the lower half, I moved my work stool along and avoided the wear and tear on my knees.
It’s interesting how doing repetitive work of any kind becomes a total meditation and how much the mind really DOES wander. I kept trying to bring my mind back to prayer and then after a time, these senseless worries and thoughts would creep in.
Next, I hope to write about the time I shared with my daughter yesterday afternoon. We canned a nice batch of salsa together. Chopping thirty cups of tomatoes is similar to staining fence boards. I’ll explain in another post. For now, I’m off to oil my feast table with tung oil.
Top Half Only...