Way Before and Way After

I have a list of completed projects to write about. Per usual, I have been very busy failing at things and even more busy failing at writing about things. When it comes to writing, the biggest fail of all is not writing. In some ways, it’s the only fail. Turns out the exact same thing is true about photography. I might be a crap photographer, but I’m never so good as when I actually remember to take pictures.

This list of things I have to write about includes a campaign desk that I bought on craigslist—wait, I’m searching my email—nearly two years ago! What? Yeah, that for sure says July 2013 on it. And if I look really hard, I can even find a photograph I took when I bought it. I put it on Instagram, in fact.

This is a grainy photo that involves power cords. It’s a bad photo. But it is a photo of my desk. So it wins the day. Because there are no other photos of this desk. Not. One.

I didn’t take a photo of the desk after I applied chemical stripper (twice) to remove the sticky brown paint. I didn’t take photos after I tried (and failed) to sand off the remaining stain with my dinky little battery-powered hand sander. I didn’t take a photo of the very serious power sander (not dinky) that my neighbor loaned me. I did order a new backing pad for my neighbor’s power sander when the one on the sander completely deteriorated (because I sanded the hell out of this desk, and, apparently, the sander itself). I can check my Amazon account and see that I bought that backing pad in late July 2014. That’s how I know I did this project in late July. The only way I know. Because I took not a single photograph. Not even an after shot when I was done.

I remember choosing a darker Danish oil for the finish, and I remember using paint stripper and then Brasso to clean the brass pulls and brackets. I also remember that the brackets were a cheaper kind of brass, that they clearly weren’t the original hardware like the pulls, and I remember leaving them off. I can still see the tiny nail marks where those brackets were. They show up pretty prominently because I didn’t fill them before I stained. I don’t remember deciding to do that on purpose. I think I just failed that part. I also don’t remember why I didn’t want to take any pictures. I guess I failed that part, too.

I have dozens of photographs of all the other projects I still need to write about, so I can’t be sure what I was thinking in late July 2014 when I chose not to photograph this project. But I suspect that I was feeling a little blue. I sort of remember maybe breaking it off with some guy in July. And it had been a few months since I worked on Fail It Yourself, and many many months since I worked on it seriously. And I’d been struggling creatively with other projects. And maybe I didn’t take any photographs because I didn’t think my work was worth chronicling. I can’t be sure. It’s also possible I just accidentally erased some photos. I mean, I’m not not prone to error.

But I’m looking around this apartment tonight, and I don’t know if my life is worth chronicling, but I know I’ve worked hard to craft it piece by piece. I want my space to be bright and clean and ruthless. I want everything to be exactly what I mean it to be. But it isn’t. My life and my space aren’t full of clean lines. (How could they be, when I cut so many corners?) But this is my mess. I’m kind of proud of it.

So my before might be way before, and my after might be very after. But this is my desk. I work at it every day.

Wait 30 Minutes

I took 10 years of piano lessons. I practiced the piano every day in preparation for those lessons. I remember my mother explaining to me when I was really little that the time I spent practicing wasn’t about satisfying her or satisfying my piano teacher but satisfying myself. This sounded like a load of crap. I just wanted to know if 30 minutes was long enough to sit on that bench and practice my scales.

I am thinking of that right now while I wait 30 minutes for the Danish oil to soak into my newly sanded old coffee table. I sanded it with the coarsest grit paper I had by hand, then with my itty bitty electric sander using my next coarsest, Velcro-backed sand paper, and finally with the finest. I wanted that stupid mildew stain to vanish, for my careless mistake to blow away in the sawdust. It never really did. No matter how much I sanded, I could still see it, the ghost of an error looking back at me like a faded but unblinking round gray eye.

I could go to the store and get tougher sandpaper, or ask to borrow the neighbor’s not-so-tiny sander, or try to bleach the stains. But I could also just agree that no one besides me will ever notice the flaw. No one besides me will ever notice that I quit before it was perfect. And yes, I’ll tell the Internet about it, but the Internet will not put its feet up on this table. Only I get to do that. So is it good enough for me? I think so. We’ll wait and see if I still think that after the second coat of Danish oil. After we find out if that accusing gray eye can’t be shrouded behind a little varnish and wax.

I quit taking music lessons in high school, after 10 years of diligent, daily 30-minute practices. I expected a pretty pissed of pair of parents when I said I was through, but Mom and Dad didn’t fuss a bit. I don’t know if they just saw it coming or what. But I suspect that when they said I had to do it for me, they meant it. And all those thousands of practices that weren’t for me were a waste of my time.

So I’ll spend 30 minutes waiting for the varnish to soak in. Maybe I’ll spend the next 10 years regretting that I didn’t sand it down three more times. Maybe I won’t. Maybe it won’t really matter at all.

Failures: The List

I figured I’d just fill you in on some of my worst failures over the past six months or so. With no further ado and in chronological order:

1. The fall

One day I decided to go for a run in my brand new Nikes before work. Just to mix it up, I decided to reverse the direction of my regular three-mile loop. Heading south rather than east in a pair of brand new shoes is apparently too much new stuff for my body to handle, and just when I was farthest from home I fell and left all the skin from both my knees on the concrete. I have since tried to make this a good story. But after a few drafts of “P-22 came down from Griffith Park for the morning and chased me down Lankershim, and I fell just as the NoHo park ranger’s tranquilizer gun took him down,” and “the Dollar Shave truck wrecked right there in the road and a bunch of razor blades basically rained down on my knees” and other such drivel, I have settled on the truth. I should never run in a new direction and wear new shoes at the same time. It’s just a bad idea.

I have a picture of my knees, but I’ll spare you the grisly image. My Instagram followers … not so lucky.

2. The sweater

Le mutt, who I adopted in November, seemed to shiver a lot, even when sitting in my lap wrapped up in a blanket. Lucky for him (maybe), I used to knit a lot. So I sourced a pattern from my mother’s research library of knitting patterns and sourced some free yarn from my mother’s depository of yarn (available in every conceivable color) and went to work. A few hours in, I remembered a few things. First, I remembered that I used to knit a lot, but I stopped. Then I remembered that I stopped because I hate knitting. I can’t explain why I got really into something that I really hate, but I did. There it is. That’s the truth.

I finished the project anyway because the dog still shivered even when wrapped in blankets. It was way too big and the dog actually walked out of it without even trying. He didn’t seem to hate it though (unless that’s what he was expressing by taking it off repeatedly), and he was still shivering, so I considered my options. I could start over and get the size right the second time, or I could felt it a little bit. I never really considered my options, I just took the thing to the laundromat and figured I’d blow a buck fifty on a hot water rinse and see what happened. Lo and behold, it felted up a bit tighter and fit a lot better. Also, now that le mutt and I have been buddies for six months, I know that he shivers when he’s scared, not when he’s cold. The sweater probably didn’t make any difference, but at least he doesn’t shiver anymore.

3. The nonslip slipup

In November I bought myself a new rug. It’s blue, and it’s big, and I like it a lot. But after I got it under all my furniture in my living room sofa corner, I realized I’d need a nonslip pad under it to keep it from wearing poorly and bunching up under the sofa, etc. I measured the rug and went to Target to buy some of those foam bubbly under-rug things, but when I got there, they didn’t have the big size I needed. They did have two in stock that measured two feet by three feet. I figured if I bought both of them, I’d have four by six feet covered. Perfect. So I bring those suckers home and unwrap the packaging and wail and gnash my teeth. To double both dimensions, I’d need to buy four, not two. I could do either four by three or six by two, but that’s all. I went with four by three. It’s mostly done the trick. There’s just like, oh, half the rug that slides around when le mutt slides into it. Which is pretty entertaining, so fixing it isn’t a priority.

4. And now for the big one. The doozy, as they say.

I received the most beautiful glazed pottery planter as a gift and very proudly displayed it on the previously bloody coffee table that I spent more than one Audible book refinishing last year. A couple of days later, I moved the planter to water the plants and oh, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. The bottom of this clay planter was not glazed. It was porous. And wet.

A year ago I immediately made (admittedly crappy) coasters so that I would never risk any hurt to my new old coffee table. Now I have the biggest, ugliest, mildewiest water ring in the world.

Way. To. Go. Fail It Yourself for the win.

Let’s Table the Blog

Originally posted May 20th, 2014

So, remember how I said my resolution was to update the blog for longer than the first three months of the year? Well, I have succeeded. I am updating the blog for the first time five (nearly six) months into the year. Bam. That, kids, is the smell of sweet success. And Danish oil.

Introducing a random project from the recent past: the bloody table.

Once upon a time, I made a short horror film with some friends on a shoestring budget, and we purchased a coffee table for our set at a thrift shop. Then we dumped fake blood on it. A lot of fake blood. Then we left the set up in the garage for a couple months. Then, one crazy day, I decided to take the bloody table home with me.

Fail #1: I forgot to take a photo of the table covered in blood.

I wiped all the blood off with a bucket of water and a—now ruined—dish sponge. The table then spent a few months chilling in my living room sofaloveseat corner. I put off refinishing the table for a while partly because I knew I’d mess it up and partly because I liked putting my feet on it without feeling guilty. Finally, however, events conspired to thrust me into refinishing action.

This is what it looks like when you spill pure acetone on your bloodstained thrift-store coffee table while you are trying to remove your gel manicure.

So, I have this electric sander that requires tiny little pads of sandpaper with a Velcro backing. They can only be purchased at Sears, and the last time I tried to find them they only had a fine grit version. But whatever, right? That’s what elbow grease is for! I bought a sanding block and some truly gritty paper at Home Depot and got started sanding.

Then I continued sanding. For about eight hours. I got all the old stain off (and most of the blood). Then I went back into the apartment and navigated to Sears.com with my poor stiff, bleeding, throbbing fingers and ordered the sanding pads for my electric sander. I got the variety pack. As god is my witness, I’ll never go without sandpaper for my electric sander again.

This is the table sans stain, but avec some blood stains, which I did not really photograph, but I’m being honest about anyway.

Then I sanded some more. It was better with the electric sander. But I couldn’t get the last of the blood stains out. I guess I should have cared, but two Audible books on one project is kind of my limit, so I called it quits while I was still sane.

At this point, I brought the table back inside and kept using it bare for a week or two. This should have ended in disaster, truly, but it didn’t. I didn’t spill anything on it or anything! And, anyway, I needed time to call my dad and ask him what to stain it with. Dad survey says: Danish oil.

Danish oil is not really oil, I don’t think, and I sorta doubt it’s Danish, but that’s not the point. It soaks into the wood and stains, seals, and protects all in one step, and all in one step is definitely kid approved.

It was, indeed, easy to do. The directions said to wipe it on, let it soak for 30 minutes, wipe it off, then repeat. “Easy,” I thought. “I’ll have it done in an hour,” which would have been great, because the sun was already setting when I did this math. So, pretty obviously, I forgot to take into account how long it would take to wipe the stain on with a paint brush. You can’t exactly start staining and just call it quits in the middle, so this was yet another project in which my headlamp played a major role.

People like to ask what we ever did without our smartphones, and while I see what they’re saying, I regularly state that I have no idea how I ever lived without my headlamp. I went camping recently with an outdoorsy friend of mine who admitted to not owning a headlamp, and I was so shocked and dismayed that I almost retreated to my tent and ate cold s’mores by myself in the wan but comforting light of my headlamp. I thought better of it, though, and loaned her my spare instead. Because yes, I own two.

So, hours after dark, I wiped off the final layer of stain and carried the table into the house, where it stunk the whole place up.

I kinda like it. Next up: coasters.