Serendipitous Sunset [4/366]
I am an absolute sucker for sunsets - and the one yesterday evening was just grand. I worked from home yesterday, but in the middle of the day found that I was developing a migraine. I tried a bit of Excedrin Migraine, but that didn't hit it. Since I'd been sitting all day (I'm way less active when I work at home than I am when I have to walk around the office) I decided maybe the pup and I needed to go grab a walk. So, leash in hand and winter coat on, we hopped in the car and headed over to our gorgeous neighborhood state park. The fact that I have a state park, almost literally in my back yard is one I try to never take for granted - but I very often do.
We did two laps around the pond (about a mile and a half) and I grabbed these two shots with the moon in them - the one on the left before our walk (I called it Moon Walk) and the one on the right just before we headed home (which I called Good Night Moon).
As we made the short drive home, the sky kept getting more and more color in it along the horizon so I stepped out the back door with the pup and grabbed the shot above as well as a few others over on my Flickr page. These were all taken with the Droid X and then I offloaded them off the phone via USB (a step I often don't do with phone photos - I often just rely on the preview versions that get uploaded). Since I'm still without my D80, I thought I should grab those higher quality images for use in Project Life and other memory keeping later on.
Why is it a Serendipitous Sunset? If I hadn't worked at home, if my meeting hadn't gotten cancelled, if I hadn't left at that moment to take Lindsay for a walk, if we'd done just one lap around the pond instead of two...I would have missed one of the most gorgeous sunsets. You see, just moments after I snapped that photo above, I took out the trash and all that gorgeous color was basically gone. Moments, little ones, make all the difference.
I didn't Move More (one of my intentions for the year) yesterday than the day before (I only did about half as many steps) so decided to get a little more activity in before I headed back to the computer for more work (tis the season for round the clock working). (And now that my garage has some room in it since all the bed boxes are out of there - yeah! - there is finally some room to get started on this project.
Remember the wine cabinet I bought back in December? If not, here is another photo of it taken yesterday - I'm going to call this one its official "before" shot.
I sanded a bit on the top to make sure the thing was actually made of wood (there are two coats of paint on it and the grain was hard to seem - which we'll understand in a moment), but the sides and back I still wasn't sure about so I grabbed my sanding block and went to town on the back. It may be particle board (hence no real grain), but that still counts as wood. See the wood look in the middle.
Since I was so motivated after the walk (and wanted to avoid work a bit longer) I decided to grab the Dremel trio I got for my birthday and see how its sanding drums would work on the "moulding". It's all straight wood (no filigrees or other fancy-schmancy patterns), but these could be a little hard to get at with a traditional palm sander. And - let's be honest - I have been dying to play with my new toy!
Dremel...brand new...never used...after I finally read the instructions closely enough to figure out the magic combination of buttons and screws to get the sanding drum in there.
Dremel after first use! Yeah!! Thanks mom and dad! Awesome Birthday gift (and Santa brought me a whole kit of Dremel attachments - he's so smart - that Santa!)
And, the results - it did a really good job of getting through the paint really fast (way faster than my hand sanding was doing). It felt like the paint was "peeling" off - I can't think of a better way to describe what it felt like.
I can't get all the way back into that corner with the Dremel so I'm going to have to do some pondering on that. I won't be able to do the top and back with the Dremel - will have to use the palm sander for that, but between the two, getting the old paint off won't be too much of an issue. My palm sander that I picked up at a garage sale several years ago for $3 (yep - piece of masking tape with the price was still on it) won't power on anymore (or there would have been more sanding happiness to show you) so - Aunt Idris and Uncle Ron - thank you for your Christmas Gift to me - a gift card that is soon going to transform part of itself into a new palm sander.
I'm thinking of staining the top a deep, dark brown (it seems to be real wood from the little bit of sanding I've done) and then painting the rest (creme, tan, red???). Thoughts or ideas on other finish options or color choices?