Don't let my wife see this

Finally finished the mission style trivet I made for my wife for Christmas. It should have been easy, but trying to work on it when she won’t suddenly walk in slows things down.

It’s some scraps of 3/4” Oak. I stained it using Minwax Golden Oak, just a little bit so it will match our kitchen table. 4 coats of General’s Salad Bowl Finish (It was already out for some other stuff). The tile is from the mission gift shop; my wife went to the Mission High School next door. I glued the tile in with gorilla glue and a huge stack of books for weight. The glue swelled up underneath and forced the tile up to level with the wood frame. Clever, huh? My rabbet is even, the tile is a bit irregular. The grout came from Home Depot. It’s some premixed stuff in a tub. Why they allow returns on half-used grout, I couldn’t guess. But they had a half-used tub with a markdown tag on it for 2 bucks.