Lots more work to do in the closet, but before we get back to that, I take advantage of the nice temperatures to do some concrete patching. I cleaned the concrete last weekend and there’s a few spots where the concrete has flaked off. I bought a product called Planipatch from Mapei. The directions say that if filling a large hole to back up the concrete with pea gravel, so I use the gravel where there’s larger holes.

I left off in the closet patching another hole with drywall. This patch will now get a coat of Takcoat over it. Before I do that, I do a rough scraping and sanding of all of the plaster in the closet and then apply Guardz to the plaster. I’m going to do a quicker and dirtier job here where I plaster over the existing paint rather than stripping it all off. For surfaces that are problems, there is a primer called Guardz that seals the problem surface. This technique was taught to me during my plaster lesson and but I ended up taking the harder way of completely stripping all the paint in the other rooms I worked on. I’m not going to go overboard in the closet though.

The closet shelf is pretty much done with the Tried and True varnish cured. For the attic landing shelf, I apply stain to this and then when the stain dries, I follow the same process by applying shellac and then going with the Tried and True varnish. I think this is cheaper wood, the Tried and True varnish doesn’t seem to penetrate like the other shelf. I will try some more coats to see if I can build up a coat and if not will go with Waterlox.

In the closet, I do a second coat of Takcoat to continue leveling out the two large patches. I also do the first coat for the patch near the ceiling. This patch is a lot more level than the lower ones, so that may only need one coat.

A minor aside is a side project I started was trying to fix dead spots in my lawn. I raked up some dead patches and then planted some grass seed but it didn’t seem to be growing back, but it looks like after a few weeks I’m starting to finally see some progress.

Back in the closet, I start staining the wood using Minwax. I’ve been having such bad luck with my homemade stain that I want to see how good the Minwax stain looks and see if it’s worth keeping my homemade stain in the mix.

As mentioned, the main issue I’ve had with my homemade stain is related to the doors. The main door is still not ready and I can’t get the gumminess out of the last stain job I did on that door. I keep trying to reflow the stain by scrubbing down with sandpaper and mineral spirits but it still stays tacky. I keep pushing further and further by stripping off the stain. As of now I still don’t have a fix for the door. But the good news is that the wood closet door is done with finishing. Like the shelf, I used Tried and True on this and it came out looking like it fits in with the rest of the old wood.