As promised in my previous post, here are my new bookcases: finished, installed, and filled. A huge project -- to be honest, I'm not sure it's one I would have tackled if I'd realized just how big a job it would be -- but I'm pleased as punch with the way they turned out.
Second bookcase is done at last, and thanks to timely assistance from my buddy Tim, moved into place in the living room today! Pix will come later once the shelves are filled; so far I only managed to hook up the TV, DVD player, and VCR with their myriad cables, connectors, and power cords.
As I headed into the home stretch on this extended project, I was battling not only Tidewater's typical July heat (upper 80s to low 90s every stinkin' day) and concomitent humidity, but also frequent noxious smoke from the ongoing wildfires in northeast North Carolina and the Great Dismal Swamp. This meant I could take my pick: keep the garage door closed and stifle in the heat, or put the door up for some movement of the air which might not be fit to breathe. Talk about a rock and a hard place...
Nevertheless, it's finished. With any luck, I might soon be able to actually get my car in the garage once again -- it's been over a year since I could do that.
After several weeks hiatus from the Great Bookcase Finishing Project (partly because a hideous heat wave made working in the garage untenable, but mostly because I needed a breather from, well, breathing the fumes of stain, shellac, and poly), I'm back on track and making furious progress on the second -- and definitely final! -- bookcase.
This one is going a lot faster than the first, due to experience and to changes in the sequence I'm following. First time around, I finished the five loose shelves completely (sand, stain, shellac x2, sand, poly, sand, poly), before moving on to the carcase and repeating those steps twice for two different positions of the case. This time, with one bookcase out of the way, I had room to set up a table for finishing the shelves at the same time as the first "positioning" of the carcase, plus I covered more of the carcase in the first position. Much less switching from one step to another, lots less drying time overall. The upshot is that shelves are almost finished -- due to the double-sided nature of the shelves, it was easier to do just the first poly coat: side 1 coat 1 while doing the first coat on the carcase, side 2 coat 1 while doing coat two on the carcase -- and about 2/3 of the carcase is completely done.
All that's left is to flip the carcase over onto its other side and run all steps on the left outside, right inside, and the back panels, doing the second coat of poly on the shelves when I do the poly on those parts of the carcase. (Also need to do the face frame, but I'm thinking I'll do that separately at the end; yes, I'll have to run all the steps again, but that'll all be pretty trivial.)
And then, dear readers, it goes in the living room and this bloody project will be done!
After more trips than I could count to both Home Depot and Lowe's (because Home Depot is closer, but only Lowe's has the dewaxed shellac); after getting high on fumes of gel stain, shellac, water-based poly, paint thinner, and denatured alcohol; after turning my fingers brown with gel stain when I was too lazy to don yet another a pair of gloves; after moving half a room full of furniture to clear the way for the final product ... after all that, Very Large Bookcase #1 is finally finished, in both senses of the word, i.e., the finish has been applied and it is done.
Yes, several weeks ago my long-suffering friend -- who, with his dad (and his dad's pickup truck), picked up both bookcases from the unfinished furniture store, delivered them to my home, and lugged them into the garage -- stopped by and helped me maneuver the first fruit of these labors into the house, by way of the kitchen and dining room, into the living room where we deftly inserted it into the just-wide-enough space to the right of the fireplace. OK, it wasn't all that deft, seeing as the traverse rod for the window on the adjacent wall was in the way and we had to lift the bookcase over the corner of the hearth, and then the cube tap I had installed into the outlet that is now blocked by the bookcase turned out to make the space not-quite-wide-enough, so it to go. But we overcame the obstacles, and that sucker is in place at last!
The photo at right shows the finished product in all its glory, before I started cluttering up its pristine state by actually filling the shelves with books, records (LPs , that is -- yes, I still have vinyl -- and even some ancient 78s), magazines, and other detritus.
When I get the other one done and both are tastefully arranged, I'll post a view of the final setup. Of course, considering how long it took me to get around to doing the first one, Lord knows when that will be.
I'm heading into the homestretch on finishing the first of my two unfinished bookcases. When I blogged about this before, I was still working on finishing the loose shelves and hadn't started on the case at all. But now, it's stained, shellacked, and had one coat of poly. All I have left is to sand the poly and then apply one more coat, and it'll be ready to move into my living room.
And then it's time to start on the second one...
