It was about time, as it’s been waiting for me to finish it for a while. To complete this wooden stool, I needed to sand it, paint the frame, stain and varnish the seat board, and assemble everything (and prepare some plans to put up for sale…). In this post, we’ll see how I sanded and painted it. The staining and varnishing part and the assembly will be in other posts. Mainly to avoid a very long post with several videos.
This part of painting the stool frame actually had four stages: sanding, protective base coat, primer, and painting, so let’s go through them one by one.
Sanding:
To sand the stool, I used an orbital sander with medium-grit sandpaper since the lumber I buy usually doesn’t come planed and sanded (this makes it cheaper for me). With this machine, the faces are sanded without too much effort, but it’s not advisable to use very coarse sandpaper, or we’ll be left with circular marks on the wood (due to the machine’s movement) that we’d have to remove with finer sandpaper before using the final fine grit.
After using the machine, I went over it by hand with a medium-grit sanding block, sanded the rounded corners well with a piece of fine sandpaper, and finally went over everything with a fine sanding block. These foam sanding blocks are very comfortable to use because they adapt to the shapes of the wood and generally last a long time. If we are sanding a flat surface, we can use sandpaper wrapped around a wooden block.
When sanding, it seems like we never get the piece perfect until we get tired. As long as the surface is smooth and free of sandpaper marks, it’s good enough for me.
Protective base coat:
I apply a coat or two of anti-fungal and anti-woodworm protective base coat to all the furniture (I say all as if this were my profession). It might not be necessary in every case, but I think it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you’ve ever had woodworm or moths in a piece of furniture, you’ll know how difficult it can be to get rid of them, even using specialized products.
Moreover, they spread from one piece of furniture to another without us noticing, and when we start seeing those small holes (the ones that give that nice antique effect) from which fine sawdust falls, it means we are already invaded. Then we have to take a syringe and start injecting anti-woodworm product into the holes. A very tedious task that is better avoided by treating the furniture during its fabrication.
Priming:
Primer is a paint that seals the wood pores and leaves an ideal surface for subsequent painting, or at least that’s how it’s sold to us. But is it worth it? In my opinion, if you want a good finish, yes. After sanding, it seems like everything will be smooth and perfect, but in reality, no matter how fine the sandpaper we use, we will always leave tiny loose wood fibers. These, when laid down, aren’t noticeable to the touch, but when they get damp, they lift and create a slight sandpaper effect. In some cases (depending on the type of wood, I think), dampening the surface, letting it dry, and then sanding with fine sandpaper is enough. If we use pine or fir, that trick doesn’t seem to work well (at least it didn’t for me), so it’s best to apply the primer and, once dry, give a light sanding with fine sandpaper, just enough to leave the surface smooth but being careful not to remove the primer. Maybe two coats of primer would be good if we see that it doesn’t cover the wood well.
And if we want to varnish? We apply a first coat of varnish, lightly sand, and then apply the final coat.
To avoid having the pieces rest on the table after applying the primer and paint, we can make some feet with nails and pieces of newspaper. You’ll see it better in the video.
Painting:
For painting (and for priming and varnishing), it’s necessary to use a proper mask. Another option is to paint in a very well-ventilated place, but drafts will cause dust specks to settle on the paint, ruining the final result. There are masks that fit very well to the face so that no air enters except through the filters. These filters are bought according to the use we need. They come in the form of cartridges and screw onto the sides of the mask. If you want the paint to look good, it’s best to buy one of these masks so you can paint in a place without drafts.
The video is a bit monotonous, painting and painting. Also, due to lighting issues (as the clouds passed, I had more or less light), or maybe because I didn’t adjust the camera’s white balance well, some scenes are darker than others. You’ll also notice a bit less resolution in the images, and that’s because I still can’t record with the camcorder. The point is to keep going.
I must admit that I still haven’t mastered painting, and too often, the final result being good is a matter of luck. You’ll see in this video that the result is quite poor. I’ll sand everything again and paint more carefully (and I’ll record another video), hoping to get a better finish. I have to learn to paint with the spray gun.