This weekend I flew to Lubbock, TX to visit Clay. Clay has owned the same dresser–a hand me down from his older brother–since before I met him five year ago. I never knew the dresser to be without dents or scratches or even to posses all six of its handles.
So Friday I turned to Clay and said, “You know we could replace the hardware on your dresser this weekend.”
He shrugged, “We could…”
I started getting excited, “We could also paint it!”
More shrugging followed by, “We could–or we could stain it.”
Neither of us had ever stained anything before but we were confident in our ability to figure it out. We called around for advice, bought the necessary supplies, and got to work.
Everyone that we talked to seemed to disagree on how much you should sand a piece of furniture before staining it. Feeling lazy, Clay and I opted to go with the school of thought that preached lightly sanding rather than completely sanding down to the bare wood.
Unfortunately, for our project, I think we chose wrong. The thing to remember about staining is that any imperfections that result in areas with more exposed wood will absorb the stain at a different rate that the rest of the surface area.
If we had spent the time sanding the wood to a more uniform state, then the stain would not have highlighted the imperfections in the way that this attempt did. In the end we opted to paint over our mistakes. Comeback tomorrow to see how it all turned out. Have you ever stained anything before? Tell me it turned out better than this!
Special thanks to Clay for understanding my weird definition of a vacation.
Impulse buy of the week: microfiber dusting cloths. I never feel compelled to dust but when I was wandering around Home Depot (I swear they make all hardware stores convoluted to increase impulse purchases) I fell in love with the Method microfiber dusting cloths. I quickly realized that there were inexpensive options. The color of the budget cloths wasn’t nearly as pretty as these :
But I thought of Kasey and went with the neon budget cloths. I think she would be proud. Instead of one Method cloth for $5 I bought three for the same price. Now I’m noticing dust everywhere, but even things like the lamp shades on our shelf that I thought would never live to see a clean day are looking so much better! Look at all of the disgusting dirt and grime in this before picture:
Here is the much cleaner after. It’s not perfect but between the new filter and these great dusting cloths, I’m beginning to think that the air we are breathing is much cleaner.
Any recent impulse buys out there in the blogosphere? Given the chance would you buy it again or did you find yourself wishing that you could return it?
Image courtesy of About.com.
About a month ago Peter went to replace the air filter and found out that it measures 21.5”x 21.5”x1″.Can you imagine a more random size? To be honest, before this predicament, I’d never thought about filter sizes. The first time we thought to buy a replacement we thought all we needed to know was whether the vent was square or rectangular. We were that naive. We searched and searched for the right sized filter until finally, Peter talked to an air conditioning company. We learned that they could special order us twelve filters for $10 each. After seeing the prices of store bought filters, I was appalled. Who wants to spend $120 per year on air conditioning filters? I don’t.
That’s when our great friend, Clay, told us about cut-to-size filters. I looked for these at both Home Depot and Lowe’s but only managed to find them at the latter. This particular air filter was only $6. Here’s a picture of the packaging.
Unlike other filters, the Natural Aire does not need a frame. The fibers in the filter are so thick that you can just cut it and put it into your vent as is. This is really helpful if the area around your vent is tight on space because you can bend the filter without worrying about breaking the frame.
We put our old filter on top of the new one and drew a line with a Sharpie to mark where we needed to cut.
Here’s a close up of that horribly dirty filter. We obviously waited longer than we were supposed to before we tackled this task. In fact, I’d be surprised if Peter has ever changed the air filter in the entire three or so years that he has lived here.
The excess filter can be discarded, unless of course you wanted to save it for a fun little craft.
Then you slip the filter in and you’re good to go. It only take a couple minutes.
Those of you who are really observant may have noticed that the filter is actually 1.5″ too short on one side. 20 x 30 x 1 was the largest size that I could find. Even though the filter is slightly smaller, it more than covered the opening when I put it in the vent.
The Natural Aire filter can also be washed, so instead of throwing away a filter every three months (or once a month like the custom ones from the air conditioning company required), you can remove this filter and clean it with a hose. If you opt to clean it, then the filter can last for an entire year. I dont know about you but I choose $6 over $120 any day. Plus, we feel great that we’re not tossing an extra eleven filters a year into the landfills.
Tell us about your air! What kind of filters do you buy? Are they standard sized or was finding a replacement a complete pain like it was for us?
When Peter was sanding our end tables he made me promise that before we decided to take on another project that required a significant amount of sanding we would buy an electric sander. So a week and a half ago when we found a buffet at the Salvation Army, we headed straight to Lowe’s. We paced around the electric sander aisle for a few minutes before conceding that we knew nothing about them. Did we want a belt sander or a finishing sander? I’m sure this is pretty basic for anyone who has dabbled in home improvement, but we figured that if we didn’t know the answer, then some of our beloved readers may not know it either.
Here’s the breakdown according to the guy from Lowe’s:
If you are going to do any heavy duty sanding than you will need to buy a belt sander. These are a lot more difficult to control, which increases the risk of damaging wood, but they sand things down a lot faster.
A finishing sander is used for pieces that don’t need any major stripping. They allow for greater control, especially in the hands of a novice. We opted for the finishing sander since it has a wide face to cover a lot of surface area and a pointed tip to facilitate sanding in tiny crevices.
Another interesting fact: The grade of the sand paper refers to the coarseness of the particles. A low grade paper contains thicker particles while a higher grade consists of finer particles.
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