A Moment of Tiki: A Very Tiki Bob Christmas

I haven't been posting many "Tiki Build-Along" posts here in 2020 because much of my effort at chronicling my tiki bar build has gone into my YouTube series, "A Moment of Tiki." My latest episode, "A Very Tiki Bob Christmas," is linked below. This year I carved 13 Tiki Bob holiday ornaments, which the video documents. Of those, 10 went to various tikiphile friends, but I reseved three to give away. That's right--anyone with an inclination to do so may enter to win their very own Tiki Bob on three different platforms, as long as they get their entry in by 11:59 a.m. December 25, 2020:

• "A Moment of Tiki" on YouTube
• "Lagoon of Mystery" on Instagram
• "A Moment of Tiki" on Facebook

Here's the Tiki Bob episode of "A Moment of Tiki":

So, you may be asking yourself by this point, "What's up with the Tiki Bob ornaments?" I'm glad you asked! Several years ago, The Wife and I were invited to a tiki Christmas party that had a white elephant-style ornament swap. Still being newcomers, I wanted to make a good impression and bring cool ornaments, but couldn't think of anything appropriate. It was The Wife, always the clever one, who suggested I carve some ornaments. I'd carved handles for the tiki mug display case in the Lagoon of Mystery, as well as the baseboards and chair rails, so it seemed like a good idea. Those ornaments, pictured below, were pretty crude but proved to be quite popular at the party.

The next year we were invited back, so I decided to make another pair of ornaments. This time I had a better handle on the process, and turned out the two pictured below. These proved even more popular and led to my conceiving the Tiki Bob ornaments to gift to our friends we can't cather with because of the ongoing COVID pandemic.

Needless to day, I'm a bit Tiki Bob'd out. But wouldn't you know it, even though I was ready to pack away my Dremel for the year, inspiration struck, and I found myself compelled to start putting this little fellow together. Wooden pufferfish Christmas (or Festivus, or Yule, or whatever) ornaments don't seem to be terribly common. I've still got to stain and seal him (I'm going with a dark wood finish) but I can see future versions in festive holiday colors. We shall see where this particular impetus takes me.

UPDATE: Here are the winners:

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Office build-along, pt. 10

Okay, we've run into some problems. And by "we" I mean "me." Take a look at the photo of the attached end cabinet below. The right side of the cabinet is about 1/2 an inch from laying flush against the wall. That looks like a pretty insignificant amount, but it's not. Turns out my walls--at least in that corner--are not squared. The upright shelf support is one or two degrees off 90, which means the cabinet attached to it does not line up flush with the next upright shelf support to go in. It also means that the shelves won't fit into the routered dado grooves. They go in about half way and then wedge in there. You'd think you could simply force the cabinet and uprights into position, the deviation being so small, but you'd be wrong.

There are several possible solutions, but the one I went with was to disassemble everything, pull that offending upright away from the wall, then reattach it using shims to make up the difference. How'd it work? Good enough for the pieces to fit the way the should. Mostly. It's not pretty, but that will be covered up by trim when I'm finished.

The process of disassembling the pieces also brought to my attention another problem that would've been far, far more difficult to deal with if I didn't discover it until later. I hadn't laid down a vapor barrier. When one has wood coming into contact with concrete, moisture can migrate up through said concrete and accumulate in the wood, leading to the potential for rot, mold and other unpleasant things. A moisture/vapor barrier prevents this. Now the laminate flooring had a very cheap, thin cushion that is of foamlike plastic origin. I'm pretty sure that did double-duty as a vapor barrier. But it's so bargain basement I'm ripping it out to replace it with one of higher quality. It also didn't reach all the way to the wall, which I'm rectifying now. I'm laying the new vapor barrier down and installing the bookshelves over it. No matter how much I vacuum and sweep, dirt and debris turns out in spades for the black vapor barrier.

I'm also facing another problem. The 2x12 uprights have been stored outside for months as I cut, sand, stain and varnish them. They're sheltered on the back patio, but still exposed to wide temperature swings as well as humidity. What started out as 10 rail-straight boards are now 10 boards that are developing slight warps. Nothing really obvious, but I'm finding little deviations when I move them into position. I need some way to keep them consistently vertical and plum. Also, the back wall doesn't have a convenient joist to attach all the uprights to. The existing studs are not positioned where the uprights can be directly attached. I could just wedge everything in there and depend on gravity to keep it stable, but that's just asking for trouble. How to anchor the uprights and ensure proper positioning?

I'm going to try something I considered for the previous bookshelf build at the old house, but discarded because there were convenient joists for attachment. I set my grandfather's old Rockwell table saw to make a 45 degree cut. Have I mentioned how much I use this table saw and other tools inherited from Grandpa Fritz? Because I do use them. A lot. Above is the dial setting, and below is what the blade actually looks like.

Then I ran a straight 2x4 through, twice at 45 degrees and once at 90 degrees to split the board into four triangular strips. I mis-measured a little, so the triangles aren't all equal in size, but they're still close enough for my needs. I'll cut each of these into lengths to fit between the very tops of the upright 2x12 shelf supports. I'll screw the uprights to the triangle strips, then screw the strips into the wall studs. Plus, it should solve another issue that's a carryover from the old house, but I'm not quite there yet.

Where I am at is the shelf-cutting phase. After calculating how much shelf space I actually needed, I bit the bullet and bought four 4x8 sheets of 23/32" thick radiata pine plywood. That's just a hair thinner than the 3/4" router cuts I made for the shelving, so should fit even with a couple coats of varnish. At the old house, I bought plywood that was the same thickness as the cuts, and none of them would fit, so I had to sand down all the edges. Ugh. The pine plywood is not as nice as oak or Baltic birch or even spruce plywood. It's only sanded on one side, but it was the most affordable plywood available. The shelves will be covered with books, so I can't afford to be too picky.

I use a T square, ruler and measuring tape to mark the cuts. Each shelf is approximately 30" wide and 11" deep.

Measure twice and cut once, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, sometimes that's not even enough. Working late at night I sometimes get a little punchy and the numbers swim around in my head, screwing things up (as you'll soon see). But the shelf measurements were pretty straightforward. The plywood sheets were too big to run through the table saw with any accuracy, so instead I used Grandpa Fritz's circle saw to split the sheets up into 30" sections.

On a table saw, 30" sections of plywood are much more manageable. I set the rip fence to give me an 11" wide cut, and ran those sections through, over and over and over, assembly-line style. I have to pause here a moment to extol the virtues of wearing eye protection whilst using power tools. With saws and sanders, there's a lot of sawdust thrown up, and even occasional splinters. These will invariably fly into your face. One piece of gritty sawdust in the eye is terribly uncomfortable. I'm too old to feel the invulnerability of youth anymore, and I have no desire to go blind in one or both eyes, so I wear safety goggles religiously now. That wasn't always the case, but now it is. I recommend hard plastic goggles that are open to the sides, allowing plenty of air flow. Those that form a seal around the face quickly fog up if you're doing any kind of exertion, despite the fact they have rubber vents. Those things are useless if you can't see out of them. The open plastic ones seem less advanced, but they're more effective in my book.

And here they are, 25 nearly-identical shelves. I also did the narrow end shelves as well. The table saw's a great time-saver. I can't begin to imagine how long it'd take using only hand saws.

And fitting one into a random shelf slot proves to be a success! Not only did it fit, sliding in with little effort, it was level! I can assure you this wasn't a given, despite my efforts.

Now things get tricky. The corner cabinet is essentially diamond-shaped. Because of the way it's built, it can't actually sit flush against the back corner, because it won't line up with the 2x12 uprights. Trust me on this. There's slightly less than a 1/4 inch discrepancy here, so to make up the difference, I glued shims along the back to make up the difference. I used Loctite II glue, which is pretty darn strong, and clamped the shims down for and hour to ensure the bond set.

To cut the shelves, which look a whole lot like Superman's "S" shield, I first cut a template out using poster board. This ensures consistency in each shelf--no small consideration when working with an odd shape.

Using the template as a guide, I first cut out 5 squares on the table saw (one's slightly different, but we'll get to that). Then, because one corner has to come off at a 45 degree angle and I don't have a jig for the table saw that can accommodate that, I clamp the shelf to a convenient plywood surface and use the circle saw to hand-cut along the pencil line. It's a short cut, and the circle saw inherently doesn't let you deviate too much, so this freehand approach went pretty successfully.

Here's where things go FUBAR. Remember I mentioned that one square was a little different? That's because it's the bottom, base shelf, which will attach directly onto the corner cabinet's top. I did something stupid early on that I didn't realize until now. Back at the old house, I simply cut the base shelves to fit and laid them on top of the cabinets when the time came. I think I used paneling nails to secure them in place, I can't exactly remember. Well, this time around, I routered dado grooves for the base shelves. Big mistake. If you look back to my earlier installments of this build-along, you'll remember I had difficulty lining the routered cuts up consistently. For the upper shelves, this didn't make much difference, but for the base shelf, it does. One of the grooves lined up slightly below the top of the cabinet, and the opposite groove floated a little above. This meant there was no way the shelf could physically fit as-is.

So how did your resident genius think to remedy this situation? Why, by using the tool that got him into this mess in the first place! This is otherwise known as throwing good money after bad. I pencil-marked the area that needed to be stripped to make the board fit into the routered slot, then freehanded the cut. It wasn't pretty, but it was late and I was tired. Not the best of decision-making conditions. Then, because I'm a can-do person, I repeated the action on the other side. Except... one shelf support was lower, and one higher, remember? I cut both of these on the top, which meant the shelf still didn't fit! Argh!

So I went back and routered the underside to make it fit. And yes, it did finally fit. Except... remember how this is the base shelf? It is cut larger than the others, so that 2" protrudes forward over the cabinet. A lip, as it were, rather than coming out flush. And now I had three raggedy-ass router cuts extending all the way out to the edge of the shelf. The front edge will be covered by trim, but those ugly cuts will be painfully visible where only smooth shelf should be. Is there any wonder why I've never been invited to join MENSA?

So help me, in my addled state I still thought I could fix it. In my defense, my plywood supply was running low and I wasn't sure I could cut a new shelf and not have to go buy another sheet to finish out my other needs. So, in order to save me from having to cut a new shelf, how could I fix those wayward cuts? Wood putty! Honestly, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Never mind the fact that I've never gotten wood putty to take stain enough to blend in with the surrounding wood. So, yeah. I measured and puttied and scraped and sculpted. This is the best I could come up with. Guess what? It did not get any prettier once dried.

In the harsh light of day, I finally admitted defeat and accepted this was one sow's ear that I could not make into a silk purse. I did some measuring and calculating and came up with the realization I could cut a new shelf and have enough wood to finish the job if I cannibalized this messed-up shelf and cut smaller end shelves out of it. So that's what I did. Below is the newly-cut square shelf ready to be turned into Superman's "S" shield.

Why did I use the jig saw this time rather than the circle saw? Honestly, I have no answer. I think maybe the freehand router work had me a bit spooked, and I wanted a hard guide to ensure a straight cut. Because of the size of the cut and the physical shape of the circle saw, that would've been challenging with the circle saw, whereas the smaller jig saw was much easier to line up and get the guide properly anchored.

And here's the corner cabinet, of which cutting the shelves for it has consumed parts of two days now. I'm not a terribly efficient wood worker, you'll notice. This is without the base shelf...

And this is with the new-cut base shelf! Perfect fit! You'll notice I learned from my previous mistake and did not attempt to make the shelf compatible with the misbegotten routered dado slots. Instead, I went back to what I did more than a decade ago and cut the shelf to rest atop the cabinet. The shelf itself and additional trim pieces will hide the now-vestigial slots, and we shall never speak of them again. *sigh*

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Office build along, pt. 8

When I last updated my office project in November, I'd routered down all the upright 2x12 boards along the far wall so that they'd fit in the space that was almost exactly 2 inches shorter than it needed to be. That was certainly a pain, but the real tedium had yet to commence.

To accommodate the horizontal shelving, I needed to cut notches in each of those uprights at a suitable height. The most effective way of doing so was to router a 3/4" wide slot 1/2-1/4" deep. Which is all well and good, except the shelving slots on one board need to match up with those of the adjacent uprights, otherwise the shelves turn out crookeder than a Trump cabinet appointee.

Easier said than done. For the life of me, I could not remember how I managed this trick a decade ago, so I got clever. First time out, I used tie-down straps to push two boards together in parallel (see below). Then I measured the shelf distance out and cut across both at the same time. This should make for perfectly matching slots, right? Wrong. I got anywhere from a half inch to a quarter inch variance. Ugh. Then I tried doing single boards, but measuring the next slot from the previous one. Even worse decision. One slight cutting error got magnified with each subsequent cut. Finally, I ended up doing what I probably did a decade ago, which is mark all the shelves along the board from the start, and cut from there.

I also ran into another problem. The ceiling in my new office is a foot higher than in my old one, so I naturally assumed I could fit in an extra row of shelves at the top. I began cutting the lower shelves, and about halfway up the board got that itchy feeling one gets when one sees a plan is about to go off the rails. It didn't look like I had enough room left. I measured, and sure enough, the upper two shelves would have to be about 9" tall each to fit. Which was a tight fit that could accept most books but not all. And it'd look weird. Double checking my numbers on the scratch pad, I realized I hadn't allowed enough room for the thickness of the actual shelves. Curses. Live and learn. Adjustments were made, so now you know why my bookshelves will have interesting spacing.

In the photo above, you'll see an adjustable rip fence/guide spanning the two boards. This turned out to be a major contributor to my early cutting errors. It was simply too long and unwieldy. It was great for cutting large boards, but not shorter cuts. I ended up picking one up that was about a third the size, and that eliminated most of the problems I was having. Other problems were self-inflicted. My decade-old 3/4" router bit had begun to dull, and left feathered shavings of wood along the top of the cuts. Not knowing how to re-sharpen router bits, I picked up a new one to finish the job. Well, when I replaced it, I didn't properly tighten it in place. The end result is that it loosened as I used it, and the groove I cut gradually increased to about a full inch deep on one of the boards. Fortunately, I was able to salvage the 2x12. But I made sure that damn router bit was tight for the remainder of the cuts! I had to cut the shelving notches into each side of each board--save the two on either end--and between family, holiday and other obligations, I was able to cut about one side per night. Not terribly fast progress, I'll admit, and it was slowed even more by the cold fronts we had in December and January because really, who wants to work outside in that kind of weather? But eventually I finished all the router work, just in time for the true Texas winter to set in, with highs in the low 80s.

Next up was the sanding of the boards. The lumber is all fairly coarse, so to be suitable for indoors, it needed several rounds of sanding. I used my Grandpa Fritz's old 30-plus-year-old sander (mine newer one crapped out last year) with 80 or 100 grit paper (I can't recall which, and am too lazy to go look). I went over all the boards with this, and took off a good deal of surface wood. This isn't a subtle grip of sandpaper. It smoothed out the rough edged and made quick work of those router "feathers" I mentioned upstream. It also created a hell of a lot of sawdust.

One thing that I learned from my self-building from a decade ago is that those stamped ink labels look like they wouldn't be visible once stained and varnished, but if anything, they stand out even more. I would cringe every time I saw those stencil marks at the old house. This time, I would not repeat the same mistake. So I applied the belt sander liberally, and eventually was rewarded with bare, virgin wood (that ink soaks in deeper than entirely convenient).

Unfortunately, belt sanders are not well-suited for finer work. Higher grades of sandpaper--in this case, 220 grit--require a lighter touch, so I broke out the old sanding block and applied some elbow grease. I ended up going through a sheet and a half of paper, slicing them into quarters to fit onto the sanding block. It doesn't take much effort at this stage. Lightly rubbing back and forth with only moderate pressure yields good results, and the board quickly smoothed out. Even so, working both sides of 10 boards is time-consuming, and it took me several days to complete the sanding.

Here they are, all lined up. From this angle, my myriad screw-ups, errors and outright errors aren't so terribly visible.

After wiping down all the boards with a damp cloth to remove residual sawdust, and allowing dry time, I'd reached the staining stage. Opening a new can of Minwax's "Special Walnut" (I'd learned my lesson after the paneling touch-up fiasco) I set to work. It took me about 7 minutes to coat one side of one board, so once I finished coating a pair of boards, it was time to wipe off any excess. I stained, then wiped, going through a bunch of rags and paper towels. I was able to stain one side one day, then after drying overnight, get the second side completed. It was a race against time, however, as the weather started turning against me. Intermittent rain and dropping temperatures were a looming threat.

The picnic table proved to be an excellent drying rack as long as it wasn't raining. Cold and damp hindered my work for the following week, but eventually the threat of rain passed and it sort of warmed up enough to do the next layer of stain. The upper 50s/lower 60s are not idea temperatures to do stain work, and certainly not with Minwax's "Dark Walnut." It's a thicker, darker stain than "Special Walnut" under the best of conditions, but with the chill, it was like painting with molasses. It went on thick, but wiping off? Hoo-boy. That stuff was stubborn. Gummy. Gloopy. Sticky. Clingy. I probably went through twice as many rags to wipe up this stuff than I did with "Special Walnut," and even had to make an extra run to Lowes for more rags. But in the end I completed the challenge, and while the 2x12 pine boards aren't a pretty as the oak cabinets, I stand by my earlier assessment than dual-layer stain just takes the look to the next level.

Next up: Polyurethane! Now Playing: Gene Rains Far Away Lands
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Office build-along, pt. 7

Last time we spoke, I spent an inordinate amount of time discussing how I moved a wall outlet and subsequently attached a piece of paneling to the wall. Today, things get real, because we're going vertical! The upright supports for my bookcase consist of 10--count 'em--2"x12"x10' boards. That's right, I'm using 2"x12"s, which are stout pieces of lumber. The first order of business was to cut them for size. My ceiling is just over 9' tall, which makes the boards too long. But the ceiling isn't consistently 9' tall--I've found the distance between ceiling and floor can vary by as much as a quarter inch or more, so I had to measure each board for each spot. Some I cut just a hair too long to fit, so I had to go back out and sand them down to fit. The one thing I didn't want was to cut too short so they'd be loose. I need stability and shoring up a loose vertical would be a real pain.

Once the verticals were cut for length, I lined them all up in position, along with the cabinets that will make up the base. Only there's a problem. Can anyone spot it?

Oh my! It would appear the width of the cabinets, combined with the width of the 2"x12" boards, is about 2" more than the wall allows. Not only will that end cabinet not fit into the narrow slot there, there is no room for the 2"x12" that goes on the right side of it. You know the saying, "Measure twice and cut once?" Well, I did. And sadly, my measurements predicted this exactly several months back. Those extra-narrow vertical cabinets I ordered special? That's because I knew early on the regular, 12" wide cabinets would never come close to fitting. Even so, I've got more lumber than space for. Fortunately, I'd formulated a plan. I just lined everything up hoping that my estimates were wrong, and everything would miraculously fit. No such luck.

The first thing was to mark each vertical board where it met a cabinet. I had to pull 2" from somewhere, and the vertical boards looked like my best bet.

Earlier I said that for every problem, I come up with the most convoluted solution possible. I fear that's what I did this time, but I worried the problem for a couple months and couldn't hit upon another solution. I used a router to reclaim those missing two inches. I've got five verticals, and figured I could shave half an inch off each one if I set the router bit to cut 1/4" deep. I could only router one side of the vertical flush against the opposite wall, but the remaining boards should've given me more than enough flexibility to reclaim the space I needed.

I set up an adjustable rip fence/cut guide above the line I drew marking where the board met the cabinet, and started grinding away wood from that point down. The biggest problem with this is that router is designed to sit on a flat plane of wood and cut a groove. As I trimmed away more and more wood, there was much less surface area to support it, and my routing grew less and less stable. Eventually, I learned to start at the bottom and work my way back and forth in curved sweeps, keeping the router at least half supported at all times. I can assure you, this was not quick work. It took several evenings to get all of it done, but once the sawdust settled, so to speak, the verticals and cabinets all fit nice and snug in the space available.

There is probably a smarter, faster way to accomplish this goal, but for the life of me I can't figure what it might be. In any event, I'm through with the bulk routing and hope to never do that again. More traditional, groove routing, however, is another story. There's a lot of that coming up. Stay tuned. Now Playing: David Bowie Best of Bowie
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Office build-along, pt. 5

When last I wrote about my office build-along, way back in June, as it turns out, I'd just stained a bunch of lauan plywood for the backing of my book shelves. Since then, a lot of other things have coopted my time, including major yard work involving mulching much brush and branches, a book launch and signing tour (such as it is), as well as the construction of a tiki bar. I'll do a post of that one soon--I didn't think to do it as a build-along, so that's on me.

The long and short of all this is that my office remodeling project and construction of the built-in book cases has lain semi-dormant most of the summer. Not entirely so, however. I removed several sections of crown molding and baseboards from my office walls that will host said cases, and ripped up some of the cheap laminate flooring to get better access to the far wall. The "far wall" was once a wide open walkway into the dining room, which is what my office was prior to my closing it in with 2x4 studs and a bunch of drywall. I took a few photos of that process when I started it back in 2015, but I can't seem to find them. You can see part of the drywall peeking out from behind the already-installed lauan paneling in the photo below.

Know what else you can see? All the boxes of books and other assorted office detritus I'm storing here in the aftermath of last October's garage flooding. That doesn't make the task at hand any easier, but it's manageable for now. Also visible in the photo below is the "bump" in the corner that is giving me consternation. It's a big load-bearing pillar in the center of the house that utilities are piped up through. The bulk of it is in the kitchen, but there's just enough of it protruding into the former dining room to make the installation of book shelves a tad more challenging.

Here's a closeup of the lauan panel at the edge of the bump. A vertical book shelf support will go here, so I won't panel over this exposed section of drywall.

On the back wall, next to the closed-up walkway is a switch for the light/fan. It's a three-way switch, meaning there's one on either side of the room to control the light. I suppose I could've paneled over it, but I'm reluctant to do that, so instead there will be a switch built into the book case, most likely never used. This necessitates cutting a hole through the paneling for the switch. This is an area I've got quite a bit of failed experience at. I've tried making precise measurements and cutting from that. Never works. While working on The Wife's photography studio, I read of a trick where one rubs down switches/plugs with colored chalk and then press the drywall against said switches. Afterward, use the chalk outlines transferred to the drywall as a cutting guide. Unfortunately, the chalk didn't always transfer very clearly and errors crept in. This time I cast about, hoping to find something more effective. Alas, I didn't think to take any photos until I'd finished. But this is what I did--I got some mouse bait, a type of greenish gel in a squeeze bottle slightly larger than a bottle of eye drops, and applied a thin line of the stuff around the edge of the switch. If you look carefully, you can still see the greenish remnants in the grooves of the white switch I'm holding in the image below. I pressed the paneling against the switch, and I've got to say, the gooey transfer was about as perfect as one could hope for. I marked a rectangle a half inch out from the gooey lines, and drilled out four holes in the corners. Then I used a jig saw to slice the lines between the pilot holes. Placing the panel up against the wall, I was rewarded with a perfect fit. After nailing it into place, I replace the white switch with a brown switch to better blend in with the dark-stained paneling. It almost looks like I know what I'm doing.

Next, I had to clean out the far corner. I'd already removed the baseboard from the far wall, but the baseboard on the adjoining wall was a problem. Lots of stuff stacked against that outside wall could not be readily moved, yet the baseboard couldn't stay there. I ended up prying the end of the baseboard from the wall, and after marking a vertical line at the 12" mark, used the jig saw to make the straight(ish) cut. Not what I'd normally recommend, but I made it work, using a pair of pliers to snap off a few shards of wood that didn't quite get cut. Then I vacuumed up all the sawdust and splinters and drywall debris and other crap that always seems to build up in corners. Judging from the yellowed water stains on the drywall and under floor, the previous owners kept a potted plant in this corner of the dining room and over-watered it on occasion. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to have been a chronic condition and I'm finding no damage beyond the cosmetic.

I just realized I left out one important step--use a stud finder to locate all the 2x4s in the wall behind the drywall, and mark their locations on the ceiling right above where the paneling will cover. Since I have 9' ceilings and the panels are 8', I mark the wall below where the paneling will go. I can get away with covering only 8' of a 9' wall because those cabinets I spent all that time staining will cover the gap. Now comes the tedious detail work. The heads of the finish nails I used to secure the paneling to the wall do not blend well. I suppose I could simply say "They'll be hidden by books. No big deal." But I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive. I'd know the job was only done half-assed. So I take a nail set and tap each nail maybe 1/16th below the surface of the plywood.

Next, I take wood putty--the common Elmer's brand seems easiest to work with--and fill in each hole. The putty's moist, so I mound it slightly to compensate for shrinkage while drying. It's such a small amount of putty that it dries fairly quickly, and I can rub the excess away from the surrounding area with my fingers after about 10 minutes.

The next day--I let it dry thoroughly overnight--I sand all the now-puttied nail holes with super-fine, 400-grit sandpaper. I don't use a sanding block or anything. The areas are so small this goes really quickly. Nice and smooth.

Next, I grab a can of the stain I originally used on the paneling and use the corner of a folded-down paper towel to apply the stain to the putty. I get a little sloppy with it, but there's no worry, as any excess will blend in with the existing stain. Right?

Wong. Remember back when I stained the paneling using Minwax Special Walnut and decided the wood came out dark enough to forego a second, topcoat of Dark Walnut? Well, Dark Walnut and Special Walnut come in cans that look exactly the same except for the actual words on the label, and if one does something foolish, like, maybe, not actually read which stain he may or may not be using, the two could easily get mixed up.

So yeah, I screwed up. I got about halfway through staining the putty holes before thinking those stains looked a little too dark. Then I discovered the excess wouldn't wipe away. The Dark Walnut stain formed irregular donut rings around the putty holes that kinda betray my efforts to make my shelves look all professional-like. From a distance, they look a lot like the dark knotholes that dot the plywood. Up close they look like screw-ups. It still blends better than the naked nail heads or the light putty, but I'm annoyed at myself. Fortunately, this will all be covered up by books, so nobody will ever notice. :-)

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