Lessons Learned #1: Mistake # 1 - Proper Planning

I’m not sure if this would qualify as a mistake or not, but I did learn a lesson. I had been building some cabinets over the last couple of months and they are all finally done. I have an upright that’s about 36w/16d/76h and three wall hanging cabinets that are about 46w/11d/33h. The upright and two of the wall hangers have doors that I put together. The carcass’ are all 3/4” red oak ply from Borg and the face frames/doors are 3/4 red oak with 1/4” red oak panels. The cabinets went together nice and I learned lots of ww stuff in the process (my first real furniture’ish type build).

Here’s the rub – I suddenly have a lot (to me) of furniture to sand, stain, sand, seal, sand, seal, sand, seal…. Oh my goodness, why on earth did I wait til they were all done to start this process? I literally spent all day Saturday sanding everything at 100, 150, and then 220. It took me most of Sunday to get all the pieces stained. The lessons I learned here are (1) sand to at least 150 as I build, i.e., pre-assembly, and (2) try not to have so many projects to finish at the same time.

I realize there is a learning curve associated with our ww passion and this is all part of it. I just wish someone would come sand and seal all that furniture in my garage. :) You can bet your bottom dollar I won’t be making this mistake again!