Kitchen Step Stool
You wouldn’t believe it if I told you that I have moved on from scrapbooking to woodworking… would you?! Well, this is one of the MANY projects that we have been working on lately. I found the plan (link is attached to photo, I hope) FREE online and my sweet hubby helped me out majorly with this one. The thing is… he has so many specialized tools that I don’t know the uses for or the manner of which to care for them… and often times, it’s all about having the right tools.
One of the things that I learned in this project is that even if you follow a plan exactly (or as exactly as one can…) things don’t always line up exactly. We had to do a little leveling of legs once the whole things was together, and we modified a few spots just a tad… but ultimately, we did it!!
I got to use a lot of new tools for this one… Hubby taught me how to cut out the curve of the seat with hand tools (chisel and saw and planes) and I used a variety of specialized planes for certain cut-outs. I can’t remember the name of the tool we used to sand the corners rounder – but it was like a big metal rod that worked like sandpaper. (I’m great at this, aren’t I?) I used an orbital sander, which I’m getting quite familiar with, and a Dremel Multi-Max… we had SO much fun. This was truly a group effort. I couldn’t have done it without the hubby!
Another thing we learned… we don’t like Gel Stain. Well, so far. We sanded down the bench super duper well and then applied gel stain, but too much at one time, and by the time I got to wiping off excess, it was like dark glue had been spread all over the thing. We ended up doing numerous mineral spirits wipe downs, essentially stripping as much as we could from the wood. Then, a good sanding and a coating of Danish Oil… except that the Danish oil made the gel stain weep out… and it just didn’t want to cure. So we took to heavily sanding it again and mineral spirit stripping it – AGAIN… I even had to take an orbital sander to it because hand sanding was just taking TOO long… (Trick I learned: wet the sandpaper with mineral spirits!!) Anywho… ended up using a Dremel Multi-Max to scrape off the gel stain that bubbled up from the heat from the orbital…
Loooong story shorter… we ended up stripping as much as possible and applying Danish Oil with stain, letting it cure outside and then applying a coat of Polycrylic. Beautiful result… Painful process. I think I’m going to attempt a water-based stain in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more details. I’ll work on that in the future. I’m just excited we are getting projects done with a 1 year old and 3 year old in the house!
