oh hot damn i finally FINALLY finished the shelves in the corner of the project area (dining room) and it really feels like i am getting somewhere! they even look nice and are level! i immediately put a bunch of project stuff on them, cleared some table space and cleaned up the room a bit. so much better.

i've got the wood tile panels for the fireplace in progess and it looks like it's going to come out well. i got some wood trim pieces from restore for a few bucks and it gave me the option of fiddling around and finding what worked (unlike the disaster i had trying to fill the little gap in the paneling where i pried off the paint globbed old trim - i tried 3 or 4 different dowels and trim shapes and finally gave up and stuffed it full of wood filler, ha ha i hope mike the contractor doesn't make fun of me). so my fireplace fix will be expensive fancy wood tile finish on the outside, thrift store wood scraps on the inside, aw yeah. i've cut the tiles into smaller sections and glued them to a thin plywood trim backer with a lot of construction adhesive. next step is going hog with some wood filler to "grout" the little gap spaces between the tiles where the pieces aren't perfectly matched, letting that dry, and then sanding the living bejeezus out of them to smooth and level out the panel. then i can trim the panels with the router to fit perfectly and get the edges chamfered nice. the guy who made the mantlepiece gave me some of the wood finish he used so i can match the leg finish to the mantle. so that's going well.

in my further quest to do everything wrong the first time (i mean, gain valuable life experience), i've got into putting the cedar lining in the closet. i did the math and carefully worked out a plan that will let me get the coverage i want (two sides of the little walk in closet right where the clothes will hang) with 3 boxes (45 sq ft). i should have a mere 8” of cedar leftover so i have zero margin for error, awesome. i should really need 3.5 boxes but i don't feel like investing another $36. anyway, i got these stainless steel cedar shingle nails like they say to get (something about regular nails discoloring the wood), and they are pretty long and i figured that was good, right? until i went to hammer one into the wall stud at a awkward angle and figured out that hammering nails into studs is hard. :-( "oh let's not just glue the cedar lining to the wall, that's tacky and what if the next person wants to remove it." so far i have not mashed my thumb but do feel like a nail hammering dunce. i just about split this piece because i kept missing the head, and like i said, i have no margin for fuckupery. i am currently nailing into plain drywall because the studs were taking forever, esp at the bottom where the angle is very bad. maybe i'll get some skinnier, smaller nails and go back and add some proper stud fastening. also, it says on the package not to open them before you are ready to work, which i have deduced is to keep all the pieces flat, because i opened one of the boxes a few weeks back and some of them warped slightly from humidity or whatever, and they are a lot fucking harder to get into place.

glue is looking pretty good right about now, but i am stubborn.

i finished the cedar lining and it went okay. there were some frustrations and hiccups, but no major blunders. i did end up with an 8" piece leftover, and no mashed fingers. there was only one piece that had a bad curve to it, but with some sanding and careful placement i got it in there. i bought some narrow cove trim to go in the corners and finish it out - didn't think i'd need it but i held a 1/4 square dowel in the corner and it looked so much better with the edges covered. i ended up buying some thin stainless steel finishing nails and they went into the studs a lot easier. pretty sure the shingle nails were total overkill, oh well. i put up the brackets for the closet rod & shelves and that was probably the most frustrating part of the whole thing, because i did a partial double shelf to make the most of the closet space. 10 brackets, four rods, ugh. everything looks very fancy and the cedar smells wonderful. i need to stain the shelves and the cove trim and get them installed and that will be it. i have not told spouse about the cedar lining - it is a surprise. i just want him to have a nice place to hang his suits. not a shitty white wire landlord special closet. proper wood pole, cedar lining, nice wide finished wood shelves. dult closet for dults!

i did test swatches of the different wood stains i have gathered. i got general finish wood dye in medium brown and graphite (or whatever they call their dark grey), plus this powdered dye in 5 little color packets that you mix with water/alcohol to make a dye. these are all good - the powdered dye is especially versatile and quite saturated in color (keda dye stain powder - aniline dye 5 color kit) and i think i need more of that shit just to have on hand because i liked it so much. it's also less expensive - a pint of the general finish dye was $22 from a local shop and the whole dye powder pack was $19, which makes up at least a pint (maybe two) of each color. i also tested the minwax stain prep and a minwax water based colored semi transparent stain in viridian green, which i got at lowes. these were not as good. the minwax stain prep helped prevent stain bleed, but also seemed to prevent the dyes from penetrating the wood slightly - the color was not as rich. it might be nice if you wanted to stencil a design with dye, maybe?, but otherwise not necessary as far as i could tell. i could not see a difference when used with the stain it was meant for. the viridian green stain is okay, but it has that "paint like" application that sits on top of the wood grain instead of highlighting it and is kinda meh in my opinion. i think the dyes are better suited for the look i want. gimmie all that wood grain.

spouse comes home in a week and i'm kinda freaking out because i have a lot to do.

- curtain rods. so i got them up and the ones for the bedrooms are all good, but the longer ones for the patio door and bay window have a problem with sagging which i absolutely cannot tolerate. like staring at a crooked picture frame. i'm working on a bracket to fix the bay window one, no problem. but i can't interrupt the patio rod with a bracket because it would prevent pulling the curtain from the right side all the way to the left. the left side is too close to cabinets. anyway, i think i am going to have to glue the rods together at the joint with epoxy or something very strong. i didn't think of this possibility and i already glued the finials on, so if i glue the middle joint too then i have to put the curtains on first because there will be no way to take them off/put them on (unless i take a saw to the finial and then figure out a screw or something to make it removeable (doable, just annoying)). so i need to get cracking and sew all these dumb rings to these dumb curtains. well at least when they are up they look nice and it's super easy to open/close them, which is what i wanted.

- kitchen cart. so i have to sand all out outward facing pieces to get the clear finish off so i can stain them. it's a light natural wood color and it just won't do. so right now it's laying around in pieces, and i need it assembled so i have a silverware drawer and i can have a functional kitchen. :-(

- fireplace. this is going well, i've pretty much got it figured out. i need to paint the surround dark blue, finish the panels for the legs, and then fasten the leg panels in place. how hard could it be?

- blue pine accent walls. so i got all that blue pine and i haven't done a damn thing with it yet. i most likely will not get all of it up, but it would be nice to do some of it, maybe the little bit above the fireplace and the headboard for our bed. i need to test the stain technique i want to do. on the bright side, having done the cedar wall i now have a better handle on how to approach the blue pine. mostly the time consuming bit will be getting the fiddly stain technique down.

- so i made a new fucking project for myself and i got these plastic containers shaped like a d12 on amazon prime day. supposedly they are for holding coffee pods but i am going to turn them into lamps. yes, i am going to spray them with "frosted glass" spray paint and figure out how to jam a lamp in there and we will have d12 lamps. which will match the d12s i am going to turn into kitchen cabinet knobs. if i am very very clever, nobody will guess that i repurposed plastic containers and dice. like, i dunno, i saw this one lamp at burlington coat factory (which is a sad and scary place) that had a d12 glass lampshade and got obsessed with dice themed light fixtures and couldn't find a second one anywhere and now i'm making lamps out of coffee pod containers.

- there's just a good deal of more shelving i wanted to put up, light switches to replace, stuff to unbox and put away, furniture to be put together, etc. i'm not going to be able to get to refinishing the kitchen cabinets.

if i can finish the closet, get the curtains all up, get the kitchen cart done, fireplace done, get some of the blue pine up, that would be acceptable.