It's been crazy busy the last couple weeks in the shop. I completed work on eight dining chairs and delivered them yesterday. I have never seen such a pathetic finishing job as what was on these chairs. The amount of dust, drips, runs, and poor application were inexcusable in my opinion. I just can not believe any finisher with a conscience charged for this work! With a lot of wet sanding, some color correction, and a hand rubbed finish applied, the chairs felt silky smooth and looked beautiful. The customer was very pleased and I was happy to have that whole bunch done.
Although I normally do not refinish exterior doors, I made an exception for the same customer with the chairs mentioned above. Their front door was a full 11 feet tall! I spent most of last Saturday up on a ladder stripping, sanding, repairing, and staining the door. It took a few more trips over there this week to get the marine grade topcoats applied. I remembered why I do not do exterior doors. If I can not bring it to the shop and work on it in a reasonable way, it's quite difficult to work efficiently. The door did come out beautifully and I'll be quite content to not get back up on the ladder for awhile.
Aside from the usual time spent daily on the ongoing armoire restoration, I took in another 6 chairs for repair. I did not need more chairs - that put the total to 22 chairs here last week. These chairs won the prize for having the most glue dumped in every joint, yet every joint failed. At least no one had driven nails through everything like I usually encounter. They also had about 40 years of wax buildup on the finish. They looked and felt a lot different when completed. Getting the finish clean and the joints solid was long overdue. Some weeks it seems I'm just doomed to clean up one mess after another. At least the week rounded out with 5 normal web caning jobs. I also received a beautiful old rocking chair with a hand caned seat that is falling apart. I got so burnt out on rattan work early last month, but already miss it after a few weeks. It will be nice to do a normal seat - not round, oddly shaped, blind caned, wrapped, or anything else - just good old fashioned 7 step cane pattern.
