Nightstand Part 3

It has been awhile since I posted for good reason. I got burned out to put it simply. Burning the candle at both ends has consequences. I still managed to get two A grades and two B grades for this last semester, register for next semester, put together my wives birthday, get a new roof on my house, continue to take care of my son, fix the sprinkler system and get it running again for this year, fertilize the lawn, fix the fountain in the back yard, re do the inside of my safe including adding custom shelving, replace the sump pump (again), and whatever else I did that I can't think of right now. It is unlike me to not work on my projects though so when the semester ended I decided to finish my nightstand. And.......

DONE! It is done. Yay. Well I finally finished it. All I have left to do is decide what to keep in the secret compartment, make some shelves/straps/pouches/pegs or whatnot to secure that item or items and then add two ingenious locking mechanisms that I will not be posting on the internet. (to be done at a later date) Anyway here it is:

As you can see it turned out very shiny. That is no accident and was actually quite a bit of work. To get that finish I used a two part epoxy resin clear coat from lowes. One mixes it thoroughly and pours it on and lets it dry for three days. Follow the instructions. Unlike what I did which was not read them. Well had I read them I would have noticed that for porous materials like say OAK, one has to put on a sealer coat first. If you do not do this then it will bubble as if it was carbonated, and the bubbles will dry as craters. To fix this I simply poured on a second coat, and then a third. For a total of nine days of dry time.There are a few craters left still, you can see a couple in the lower left quardrant of the top:

You can also see me, which is how shiny the coat is. It is also really thick, way better than a spray on clear coat. Here are a couple more pics of that:

Other things I had to do to get it to that point. Well I had to finish rough grit sanding it, made the individual planks look like one surface. Then Medium grit sand it to smooth out the rough grits work. And finally fine grit sand it twice to make it as smooth as possible. Then I took my router to the top and drawer faces. Then stained it black. Wipe the stain on then wipe it off, twice.

I Used a wax on all of the insides of it. I also sprayed the drawers with plastidip.I attached the handles once the clear was dry, had to buy new longer screws than the ones that came with it, and still had to drill out about a 1/4 inch or so for the head of the screw to inset in the drawer. Looks better that way anyway, er I mean I meant to do that.

Lets see... I added a chain to the secret compartment, and furniture sliders to the bottom on the sides so it will slide on carpet. Here is that compartment:

In all this project took way to long, but I guess I am being hard on myself since I do seem to have other things going on. I think I have decided to only take on one EXTRA project at a time from now on. So in addition to all my normal duties as a father, student, worker, EXT.... I will only do one project at a time. My next one is to turn my main floor bathroom/mudroom into a main floor bathroom/mudroom/laundry room. Should be fun.