"you cannot bear to see a stain upon him..."*

* The quote in the title is from Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman, born 1813. And like Henry, I cannot bear to see stain upon me, either, so today was a good day in that the stain ended up on the dining room floor, and not me.

I started off this morning by taking two pieces of baseboard outside and stripping the varnish off them. We had removed them when putting in the support columns for the new gable 2 years ago, I cleaned them and brought them back inside. Since I had Pete’s compressor and finish nailer I installed the one in the dining room



And the one in the hallway


Then I went to the hardware store to get some new base shoe for those two spots. Each section was just over 8 feet long, so of course the only length they had in unfinished oak was 8 feet. This isn’t a big deal in the dining room as the splice will be hidden behind the buffet, I tried to get a fairly inconspicuous spot for the hallway. I also wanted to pick up another quart of stain (it doesn’t come in gallons, not even from the company's web site. By now I really don’t need an entire gallon anyway! OF course it was out of stock, but as I was ready to leave in disgust, the young punk worker (who had not been particularly helpful up to that point, said that “Gunstock” is the very same color as “Mission Oak.” I took it and went home and sure enough they are the same number, 263.

I got out the hand miter box and cut my pieces, I had to hand cope one joint as well. Here is the exterior miter at the end of the hallway.


And the original coped shoe (left) fitting over the new (right)


The I puttied nail holes and got ready to sand the floor. I rent an 18 inch by 12 inch random orbital sander and went over the floor first with 120 grit screen then a 150 grit screen.


I went and returned the sander. When I got back the putty had dried in the nail holes so I sanded the baseboards and shoe with my hand sander. I vacuumed and wiped everything down with a tack cloth. I started to stain the baseboards and had just finished when Lisa came home. Together we started on the floor, spreading stain on with a pad and then wiping it up and evening out with paper rags.


In a little over an hour we had the room finished



Tomorrow morning I will put on a coat of varnish, with luck I could put on the second tomorrow evening.