New Toy

No, not for Grace... For me!

Awhile back Matt and I went running. While running in our neighborhood we witnessed a neighbor putting many large items on the curb in front of their house. Upon closer inspection we realized that they were throwing out a plastic outside playhouse. Matt went up to the house and asked about it. We found out that it was in good condition, nothing was missing, nothing was broken, they just had too many toys. So we asked if we could have it since it was out for garbage anyway. The lady told us to take it, and anything else that we wanted. We finished our run and Matt jumped in the car to go acquire our loot.

He got all of the pieces of the playhouse, and a wooden shelf. The shelf is probably about 3 feet high, 3 feet wide, and about 1 foot deep. A typical small shelf, but good for toys or kids books. The shelf was in perfect condition, the screws just needed to be tightened so that it would not sway back and forth.

The one issue that we had with that shelf was that it was painted a reddish purple that I did not like at all. So we decided to use some paint stripper and get it back down to the wood. Using the paint stripper I realized that it as reddish purple on top of black on top of orange on top of purple on top of polyurethane. So the stripper did work, but not well. Which led me to using sand paper to finish the job. After sanding it for one day I was left with many blisters, scratchy fingers, sore arms and back, and a defeated attitude toward the shelf. Then came last weekend...

Matt introduced me to the idea of buying a POWER SANDER!!!!!!! And let me tell you it is amazing. It did in minutes what it took me all day to do by hand. The shelves look wonderful, and are soon ready to be stained. I am so very excited and I love my new power tool (my new toy). I am sure that with all of our wood working that this will get a lot of use. When I get done I will have to post a picture of my shelf :)