Scrap Wood project, continued

Good Morning All,

Well, I've finished assembling all the parts for the coffee shelf project. Today I am going to begin applying the finish. Here are the photos:

Here are the parts of the coffee shelf-the backing and the two shelves. I made all of the parts out of pine:

First of all I'm going to apply a wood sealer to the wood. This seals the surface of the pine so the stain will absorb evening across the surface. It also allows the grain of the wood to show through. If I hadn't sealed the wood, the wood would have absorbed the stain unevenly and the grain of the wood would be obscured. Here I'm working on the backing board and I've sealed both the front and the back of the board and the edges as well:

This is what it looks like at present. I used Minwax wood sealer for this and I'm going to use Minwax stain and polyurethane for the rest of the finish. I like their products as they are simple to apply and I always get good results. Note: always used finishing products from the same manufacturer. Not all finishes are compatible with one another and you can wind up with a finish that won't dry. Then you have the unhappy experience of removing it and starting all over again. Meh:

And I also sealed the shelves. I am going to go and get a cup of coffee and let this absorb into the wood for about 15 minutes. When I come back I'll apply the stain:

Ok, I'm back. Here you can see the stain going on the backing. I used Early American wood stain for this as it results in a medium brown color. I think it will provide a good contrast to the coffee bags and coffee cups that I plan to display here. If it doesn't look very appealing I can always deepen the color by adding another layer of stain or I can also use a colored varnish over it to change the color. Or I can just use a clear polyurethane too:

Here are the shelves in the same color:

The last thing I did was stain a small piece of scrap lumber from this project. This allows me to experiment a bit before I do the final finishing. Another good reason to keep scrap lumber:

I'm going to leave all this to dry and tomorrow I'll do a little experimenting.

Just a reminder: if you live in a cold climate like I do, it's a good idea to begin moving wood glue, batteries, varnishes, etc, into a warmer part of your shop. Cold temps are not good for those kinds of products.

Ok, see you all tomorrow.

VW