August 12, 2010

Adjustable Kitchen Shelf - Part Two

Over the last few days I've been working to finish up the adjustable shelf. I stained it with a natural oak stain to add just a bit of color and then put on about 5 coats of wipe on polyurethane. I mixed up the wipe on poly myself since it is just 50/50 normal polyurethane/mineral spirits and its much cheaper than buying the pre-diluted poly. I'd never used wipe on poly before but it went on really easy and overall I like the result. Its much thinner and natural looking than the full strength brush on poly I used on the coffee table and is much easier to apply, even if you do need more coats for equivalent protection. I wiped on the first 3 coats over a day and a half without sanding between coats. After the 3rd coat it was beginning to look finished so I rubbed it down with a grey scotchbrite pad before the 4th and 5th coats. After the 5th coat the finish was a bit shinier than I wanted so I rubbed it down again with the scotchbrite to take off the gloss.

Here is the result.

This finish is much more natural than the coffee table and I think it looks quite a bit better.

After adding a keyhole hanger to each upright it was done and ready to hang.

I ended up re-ordering the shelves from what I showed in the Sketchup model since it seemed to work better going smallest to largest from top to bottom.

Here is another picture where you can see how it fits in the kitchen on the wall next to the stove.

This was a fun little project and it went quicker than I expected. I'd like to knock out another small project before the kitchen remodel kicks off so I'll have to see if I can find a good deal on some more lumber and come up with another quick idea or two.

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