Bookcase project update

Recently I bought some additional cabinetry for my ongoing office bookcase project. Since Cannon Valley Woodwork is long out of business, I ended up getting a "mostly unfinished" oak corner cabinet and two small upright cabinets to bookend the bookcase. With the earlier unfinished spruce cabinets, I'd used a polyurethane cherry wood stain, and the longer I looked at it, the less I liked it. The effect was more of a opaque redwood look rather than the natural wood aesthetic I was going for. So for the new cabinets, I reverted to a non-polyurethane stain to see if my suspicions were correct. Yep. The new cabinets looked gorgeous, making the older ones look even more like crap warmed over. Too make sure it wasn't just the differences between oak and spruce talking, I proceeded to stain the spruce (or was I birch? I can't remember rightly) plywood that will form the back of the bookcase. Again, beautiful results.

So my task was clear. No escape. I had to sand down all of the cabinets I'd stained earlier with the polyurethane abomination. Then restain them all. And following that, apply a coat of sanding sealer and, well, sand to a smooth, glossy finish. None of this is particularly complicated, meaning that even my feeble carpentry skills weren't challenged much. But geeze, it is time consuming. Particularly during the scorching afternoon heat. Fortunately, Calista and Keela helped me with the staining and application of the sanding sealing (a little bit, at least) then a good deal more with the sanding. I'll post pics later. The horizontal spruce cabinets still don't look as good as the new oak ones, but their color no longer clashes and the compatibility is much improved.

The end result to all of this is that some actual, honest to goodness progress was made. I was able to take, at the end of the day, one on the big 3/4-inch birch plywood panels and put up in my office, partially closing off the open "window" that connects the office to the living room. In the next day or so, I'll cut the remaining panel to fit, and finally close off that big gap (thus banning the housecats from my office once and for all. Hairballs... yuck!).

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