After stripping and sanding and cleaning, I just want to get the finish on the oak.  But I know through past experience if I fail to use grain filler I end up having to put so many coats of finish on and sanding back down over and over until the grain gets filled anyway and that is even more work.  Otherwise it just looks terrible when it is shiny and all the grain pores reflect back at you.

The whole day yesterday was dedicated to filling the grain of the oak woodwork around the front window.  It’s vertical and it isn’t an easy task.  I wish I could have taken it off the wall, but I tried that with the baseboards in another room and ended up having to re-plaster the area, too, because with the wood coming off the wall, so did some of the plaster.  And they used nails that I would qualify as spikes when they put these things up.  Just everything they did back then was meant to last forever.  AAaaah, until some previous person decided it was a good idea to put some water-based finish over the shellac and messed the whole thing up.

Something to think about.  I did some large sections of the window (it’s about 7 ft high and 8ft across) and didn’t get back to wiping it off soon enough and then had a cement-like mess to sand off.  I really admire master craftsmen that work with wood and have this all down to an art.  I’m still struggling with it and have thought about painting as an option.  But I know that would be a cheap cop-out.  The inside of my house is all about the beauty of natural wood.