The wreath stand.

How happy I will be when it is finally assembled in the church and prepared for Advent. We are still a few weeks away from that happy day, but I am no longer stressing about it. To be fair, I should probably stop stressing altogether as it’s not accomplishing anything.

I stressed about tearing apart the pews and getting the pieces cut out…

I stressed about the arms and would I be able to get the right color of stain…

My biggest stressor, though, was Snidley’s boots…

Would the two different pieces of oak stain differently as they had on my samples? Would they look odd? Would people say, “It would look gorgeous if only it didn’t have those odd-colored boots on it!”

There was only one way to find out…

Using the same process that was used for the arms I sanded them with three different grits of paper.

I then held my breath, coated them with the pre-stain and then used a light coat of Golden Oak stain…

They look blotchy because of how the light is hitting them.

I have to admit that the stress was all for nothing! The two pieces of wood stained almost exactly alike. If it wasn’t for the direction of the grain you might not know that they were made with two pieces of wood.

The part I feared the most ended up being one that didn’t need to be feared at all. Isn’t that how life always happens? I threw the last coat of poly on them before church this morning so now they are back in Jay’s hands. He’s going to rout some slots in the legs and the base of the stand in order to use biscuits to join the two. We don’t want any nail or screw heads showing, so a good portion of this is just glued together. As soon as Jay gets those slats routed I can begin work on finishing the base.

Speaking of the base, in my previous post I mentioned that we were going to cut the top of it at an angle so that it wasn’t so jarring on the eyes.

We have done that and constructed a cap for it. Jay did a great job on it!

The next step, besides staining the base and attaching the legs, is to drill holes at the end of the arms for the threaded insert on which the candles will sit. Jay will have to make a jig to make sure the holes are straight up and down. It wouldn’t do to build a gorgeous wreath stand just to realize that your candles are all sitting at wonky angles! We have three weeks to finish this, but there’s a real possibility that we might get it done in two. YEAH!!!