Thursday, July 30, 2015

Baby steps in the office

Hello friends! I know it’s been pretty quiet around here lately. We have been enjoying a lot of life in the form of surprise parties, cruises, and flying <3 We went on a cruise with some dear friends and we sailed under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge...


and the next weekend The Engineer flew us right over it!


We had so much fun with these guys on the cruise!


I also threw The Engineer a surprise party to celebrate his Pilot's License. He is usually really aware of everything that's going on so I worked really hard to be secretive about it and he had no idea! Haha, got ya! ;-) It was a blast and he loved it. 

We did find some time to do a little more prep work for the office so I thought I’d stop in and share!
We left off with fully installed cabinets and countertops


Since then, we’ve applied three coats of oil based polyurethane and are thinking that we want one more because there are some spots where the wood was pretty dry causing the polyurethane to really soak in. We also applied the poly to the bar. The countertops already feel so protected and another coat will totally seal the deal (no pun intended)!


This step needs to be completed before we can actually install the built-in shelves in the office. We'd previously designed the shelves and bought materials (I'll share the design soon!). There were several different variations to the design that we debated over. Ultimately we ended up purchasing baskets that will be used for storage and designed the shelves around them!

While we were working on the polyurethane, we started to cut and paint the shelves and supports. Without a table saw this process took a little longer, but we took our time and made it work!

Our cuts fit on two 4’ x 8’ pieces of ¾” birch plywood and we decided to cut everything first and paint before installation. We did this by cutting one piece at a time using the good ol’ guide board and circular saw method (just like we did on the countertops).






With one of two pieces of plywood cut, we called it a day and brought the cut boards inside for painting. I'm using one coat of primer, one coat of eggshell enamel, and two coats of semi gloss enamel for shine and durability. I applied each coat with a microfiber roller which is the best tool in the world. I highly recommend you get one if you have any painting projects ahead of you. 



Now if you will excuse me, I have a lot of boards to finish painting. I'll be back soon with the install progress!