Pantry

The painters showed back up on Tuesday and finished the clear coat on the trim.  I really, really like it and cannot wait for the trim guys to start putting it up.  

This will give you a sneak peek at what it will look like.  The doors get a bit darker once the clear coat goes on.  

We also finished up with the Septic Tank.  

Yea!  Another one of OUR tasks taken care of.

Trim guy showed up on Wednesday and he wanted to start doing the pantry first so I ran up to the house and got the plan that Bob and I drew up and he got to work.  

This is the end of second day.  Dwayne is not fast but he is precise and I'd much rather the second over the first.  To the right of the shelves there will be a piece of furniture I bought.  It will hold table cloths, and good silver etc.  Probably a couple of appliances on the top as well like the Airfryer, one of my stand mixers etc.

End of 3rd day (Friday).  He has just a little bit to finish up on Monday and then maybe he begins on the trim or he starts in on the shoe cubby.  We are having one built even though we dont have but maybe 7 pairs of shoes between us.  Its gonna hold maybe 8 pair of shoes total but we have "Closetmaid" shelves and stuff for the closet so didnt see a need for him to build anything more than a cubby.  

And as if we dont have enough on our plate we started in on the top for the dining room table. 

This is the underside.  We originally had slabs of raw wood.  Wood that had been just cut so the sides were uneven and had bark on parts of it.  We were given several names of people to contact about planing the boards and then dowling them together.  Most of those we contacted never returned our calls or priced it way too high.  So in desperation I called our cabinet people who gave us a name and he wasnt too far away from where we live.  So we called him and Bob took the wood over and he decided to tongue and groove the boards together instead of dowling.  Said it was a much better way to keep any of the boards from warping or getting out of alignment.  

As you can see there are voids in the wood.  Those have to be filled up with something so we made dam like structures around them so we could fill the voids up with casting resin.  The underside of the voids are covered with tape to keep the resin from dripping out.  You use just regular old masking tape.  Anyway you pour the casting resin in the voids and sometimes the smallest voids take more resin than you think.  You go up to the edge of the dam and then wait for it to cure.  It's pretty hot here so in 24 hours it will probably be completely cured.  Then we will sand everything off smooth.  Clean it with a bit of alcohol or acetone and wait for that to dry...1/2 an hour..maybe.  Then we will put on a very thin layer of the casting resin all over the complete table top and down the sides.  Let that dry and then use a satin polyurethane to final coat.  If the casting resin came in a satin finish we would use that but it does not..only shiny and we want it to match the light above it.  

Has to look bad before it looks beautiful.