It’s week 5 of the One Room Challenge® and we’ve completed some of the bigger projects and it’s helping us breathe a little easier. Through every DIY home project, something if not several things will go wrong or not come out the way you hoped. Picking a beautiful wood for the pillars that’s also affordable is not easy. We decided to go with bookcase wood, it’s thinner, already had a smooth finish and was still raw so we could either stain, paint or seal it.
We measured each board for a cut and then installed that board, then we’d measure the next cut. I'm sure there’s a quicker or easier way to do this but we’re not as experienced in carpentry so we wanted to remove the possibility of making measuring mistakes because of our inexperience.
This project is definitely more time-consuming than the fireplace, which is stressful when you’re on a timeline. So we’ve put in several hours every day after my husband gets off of work cutting wood and working as fast as we can before we lose daylight because we make all the cuts outdoors.
We used wood screws to attach the wood so it wouldn’t split, we filled the holes the wood screws made with wood filler and sanded them down. Now I am in a dilemma, I can’t decide if I should stain the wood, seal it or paint it. This decision is actually stressing me out so much, once you paint the wood you can’t go back to its original state.
I don’t love it as it is right now, it feels and looks unfinished. When I’m feeling indecisive like this on a design decision I try to buy more time, so I’ll live with the pillars as is and eventually I’ll be inspired by something while I am at a restaurant, shop or something I see online. It’s writer's block in the design world. Guess we will both have to wait and see what becomes of these pillars, my guess is as good as yours.
Tiffany