So Why Do They Call it Labor Day Weekend?

I guess because of all the labor that you have to do when it finally rolls around.

Corny, yes, but our weekend was spent staining furniture. No, not like cats. More like "re-staining" furniture. I have four of those fold-down bookcases, real solid stuff, made of pine, where the sides fold out and the shelves fold down. They're the stackable kind. I bought them from Barnes & Noble's catalog division (back when they had one) in 1999, a month before I moved into a condo in the Old Louisville neighborhood. I stained them some kind of light oak color, which made them look like the inside of a hollow pumpkin.

So to finally improve the decor of our bedroom, Laura and I used this to stain them (in Brazilian Rosewood). We divided the duties: I sanded every piece (the shelves came apart), then Laura slathered on the stain.

It took the better part of two days to finish the job. We went through three paintbrushes, a pack of rubber gloves, a half-dozen of my old handkerchiefs (clean, of course), a large blue plastic painting tarp left over from when Laura and I painted the condo about five years ago, and what seemed like a ream of sandpaper. They look beautiful, though. The gel stain dried to a lustre that reminds us of dark chocolate cut through with strands of caramel.

I creaked out of bed this morning from all the sanding and staining yesterday. I expect the same'll happen Tuesday morning.

Next up: we give the same treatment to a writing desk we bought from a place that rents office furniture.