Go Tarheels!

This past weekend (back when it was spring-like outside) I worked on the church pew. Here's a before-and-after:


I took a small piece (that had chipped off when I took the pew apart) to the friendly folks at Home Depot. They suggested that I could probably remove the varnish with just sandpaper. I was a bit disappointed at first, because from googling I thought I'd be using chemicals with fancy names like methylene chloride and trisodium phosphate, while wearing neoprene gloves. But instead I returned home with a $1.29 sanding block.

The sanding block worked well on the curved parts of the pew, but it would have taken a lot of elbow grease to remove the varnish from the large flat surfaces. So I bought a Ryobi 1/4 sheet pad sander, on sale for $30 at Home Depot. It was the best $30 I've spent on power tools in a while. (Is there ever a bad way to spend money on power tools?)

I sanded the 5' piece which will become the headboard on our bed, and about 90% of the bench. It was getting late (and cold) on Sunday evening so I called it a day. I'll complete the sanding on Friday and then maybe stain on Saturday. There's all sorts of opinions on the web on how to stain oak. I think I'll ask the Home Depot folks again.

This past Tuesday we went up north to Yonge and Eglinton to buy a stationary bike from Fitness Depot. It's one the exercises Heather can do without harming her back. They delivered it last week, and it's now nicely set up in the basement.

On Thursday we had a playoff game in hockey. We needed to win (a tie was no good) to move on. We actually scored the first goal, but then were down 3-1 with a couple minutes remaining. We pulled the goalie (needing to score three goals to move on) and they scored a couple empty-nets to make the score look a bit lopsided. So we're done for winter. It was one of the more fun seasons in recent Rocket history; we started passing the puck around and scored more than a goal a game. Summer hockey starts up in a couple weeks.

I was out with a vendor tonight for dinner. I had suggested either Nota Bene or Biff's (to give a more traditional option). We ended up at Biff's, which was also a convenient walk from One Yonge. It was okay; the reviews on chowhound.com sounded better. The wine was pretty good.

Well that's it for now.