Luminous Home: Power Tools and Never Ending Home Tweaks

I bought a power tool. My first one. Technically, I suppose it is "our" power tool, but I have a feeling that I will be using it more than the hubby will. Are you just dying to know what it is?? Okay, I know you can already see the photo below so I won't try to keep you in suspense. It's a circular sander!

Ain't she cute?? Funny thing is, I have been wanting this little lady for quite some time but I had this idea in my head that since it was a power tool it would be expensive. Not so!! This little cutie was less than $30 and it came with a $7 rebate. So in the end she cost less than we spend on coffee every week.

I have a slew of projects in mind where my new circular sander will play a role, front and center, but before I chew off anything too big I thought it would be smart to use her on a smaller project. So, remember this scene??

We all recall what a big improvement this is compared to what it was before...

But still, the number of different wood finishes in this small space felt chaotic. There are two different frames, the white around the window, the dark mahogany of the banister (we stained that last year), and that little table. I love that little corner table, for one, my Papaw made it (that is southern speak for Grandpa) but it also is made of about 8 different woods, which is awesome but as it turns out, not for this space. So we need to make some adjustments to the landing.

This new arrangement, sans table full of stuff, felt a millions times better to me immediately. But then of course as we lived with the adjustment, I felt like there was one more thing I could change. That's when I decided to try out my new sander. See, it's all coming together, sometimes it just takes a little while.

I have gruelingly sanded objects much bigger than this in that past by hand. It was actually shocking how easy this was. Hold the sander over the surface and the finish is removed. No sweat involved. First I sanded the top, then the outer edges and then the inner edges. All in all, this probably took me less than 30 minutes.

Once the sanding was all done and the frame wiped down I needed something to go in the frame that would allow me to spray paint it with out gumming up the slits and grooves that hold everything in place. The obvious choice was using the cardboard that came in the frame. So I went with the obvious choice.