Sanding the Stand

Today's biggest accomplishment (besides not losing my mind with a potty-training toddler who peed 5 times on the floor for attention while I was cooking dinner) was finishing the sanding of the 75-gallon aquarium stand!

I did not take a real "before" photo... this is just from the night that my friend and I dropped it off in the back yard.   

Rest assured, the finish was awful on the front, it had to be removed.  Pardon the leftover landscaping trash.

A week ago when I started, I was not aware of the cardinal sin that is using a belt-sander across the wood grain.  Oops!  I probably spent 3 hours total using a combination of the belt sander, an orbital sander, and hand-sanding to get this thing naked and try to hide my belt-sander mistakes.

Progress... against the grain!  I remembered to toss in one of the doors for a color comparison... the door had only been very lightly sanded at this point, but you can see how the finish was peeling off.

 

But hey, now it looks pretty nice!  It'll have a bit of a "distressed" look to it, especially in the belt-sander gouges, but hopefully not too bad.

Oh wait, I still have to do the doors. 

I tested the stain on a part of the stand that won't be seen, and... did a catastrophically horrible job.  How do you "wipe away the excess stain" when there is no excess because the wood instantly soaked it all up?  I'll have to try again in the morning.  Stay tuned!