I’m nothing if not obsessive, ridiculously self-critical and weirdly competitive with that cheapskate thing layered in for extra fun. Not a great combo for basic stuff like a sense of contentment or feelings of ease and satisfaction. Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble finding modern miniature stuff on my thrifty routes and thought that instead of buying a bunch of super pricey premade mini furniture that wasn’t quite right for my Dollhouse Challenge, why not just build everything from scratch? Which is probably crazy person thinking.

Especially considering that CERTAIN people do micro better.

So, all my art school tools got dusted off and the local craft store hit up for all that craft wood, felt and leather scraps usually only encountered in my darkest nightmares. Of course, now there is a giant mess in the dining room from experimenting with materials and substandard construction methods, because I learn mainly through failure. Screw research.

Wait, what am I going to do with all this mini stuff when this is over?

Great.

Let’s not think about the future. Let’s look at that mini gray sofa instead. LOOK. It’s made of felt and basswood and tears.

Or look! After only three failed attempts I built a leather sling chair and ottoman…which probably needs to be tweaked and remade to address a few problems. But it’s fine for now? Or until my self-critical crazy brain wins and forces a rebuild.

Hey, a bench.

Yeah dude, I totally hand cut and sculpted those balsa wood legs like a pro. Totally mitered the crap out of the corners and slammed a craft store birch plywood veneer on top.

That’s how I roll.

Worked so nice I did it twice. With a coffee table.

This chunky mini dining table is made from a 99¢ “mosaic plaque wood blank” with four pieces of balsa slapped on for legs. Less than 10 minutes and $1.50 to build.

BOOM. Done.

Check out my “credenza” that doesn’t open or store anything. It’s all an illusion, except for the brass legs. Those are real brass.

This reminds me that at some point I need to decide on finishes (stains? oil? paint?) for all this sad crafty birch-colored wood. Maybe I should upgrade to nicer woods? Oh, but that sounds like it requires some effort and more money…so nope.

Boom. Another bench? Shut up. I like building benches.

And yes this is “upholstered” in fine leather (which means I glued scrap leather to balsa wood). Luxurious.

Right after I photographed my mini sling chair I dropped it and boom, looks like my patented “throw more glue on it” method of construction didn’t hold up so well.

Luckily, since I’m a genius, I knew to throw more glue on it and now it’s like it never happened. Except for all the visible glue.

Speaking of, I’ve become pretty glue reliant. Why do things right when you can glue your problems away? It’s too bad glue looks sloppy on fabric (as demonstrated via my pillow experiments), so still looking to resolve the mini textile issue…but I despise sewing. HOW CAN ONE PERSON FACE SUCH ADVERSITY?

BTW, this headboard / sloped ceiling / bed frame conundrum still requires solutions. Among many other things…

Things in context. Glorious.

I’ve neglected to finish building the a-frame structure or decide on it’s finer details since finishing stuff or focusing on doing one thing at a time is for suckers. Chaos is way cooler.

OK. Only a million more mini things to do.

*BTW – if you enjoy mini stuff (or dogs), check out & follow thebrickhouse : instagram feed. Expect an overabundance of terrible shots of my mini experiments & the chihuahuas (or liquor & food).

A little while back Laure and I went through her storage and pulled out a few portfolios filled with large scale photos she had taken during art school. We framed one great landscape for her bedroom and it looked so crazy amazing that she graciously let me borrow this softly colored desk shot so I could have a big ‘ol framed photo as well.

I hung it and looked at it and then texted her a picture of everything installed.

While it’s a great piece, we both agreed that it was being completely overpowered by the fireplace. Off to another spot with you!

The area above the fireplace has been an ongoing struggle, with many unsatisfactory incarnations including these – HERE – HERE - HERE.

The problem is scale.

Our ceilings are a standard 8′ tall, but the fireplace rides pretty high on the wall allowing for a mere 37″ of white space above the mantel. Two thin windows flank the fireplace on either side and their top moldings create a weird invisible horizontal line across the wall. When anything hangs near or above this strange visual trickery the ceiling begins to feel really low, while conversely, the art appears to be hung way too high.

Then there’s that mantel.

Blech.

Overly fussy and completely under-scaled, this has been one of those “I’ll get to it projects” that never seemed to be gotten to. All I’ve ever imagined doing was installing a simple but chunkier wood mantel over the top of this thing. Something boxy, something easy to build, something budget friendly.

Excuse my terrible photoshopping, but a solution as simple as this uncomplicated wood box would be better scaled and suited for the fireplace mantle, easily constructed and pretty cheap materials-wise.

Screw it. Why not go all change crazy and paint the brick a lighter color like a soft gray/almost white. Or go slightly less nuttier and paint the thing a true black.

(I’m leaning lighter – if for no other reason than to shake things up)

Over the mantle art-wise is still an issue. I’ve hunted for the perfect long and lean piece to snuggle up into that strangely proportioned spot and have come up with ZERO things after almost four years of searching. Time to DIY.

Surprise surprise. I can’t afford a Stella or a Judd or any blue chippy art. I mean, I wish I could – that would be INCREDIBLE – but I can’t even find an affordable no-name modernist abstract painting or mid century fiber art wall hanging, let alone ANYTHING that’s both famous and super long and lean.

Making some fauxart has long been a noodle in my brain (and something I have done before). Why not. Faking it is fun.

I’ve been mocking up a few different (easily made) options – but SHOCKER – this long/thin composition isn’t widely popular with artists whose work I dig. Or really any artists. ‘Cause it’s weird.

Firstly, a fake Ed Ruscha, well actually it’s from his art book THEN & NOW. I don’t know, it’s not a favorite – I just always liked that project and this typography. Plus this would be so easy to make.

Next idea was a fake Matthew Brannon. I always liked his larger scale installations – like the Whitney limply coiled eel, a reoccurring motif in his work. It’s the right scale and I love an eel.

Otherwise, most of the artist’s work that I love looks awkward as hell squished into a format like this or is too labor intensive for my quick and dirty faker style. I though I could pretty easily pull-off something text based like a Weiner or a Holzer or a Shrigley or a Nauman or even a Baldessari – but nothing felt quite right (even though I love me some Weiner).

I’ll always remember this story a teacher once told me about going to another rather famous artists studio. He was admiring all the Jasper Johns and Warhols (or things equally blue chippy) and asked about the pieces. “Oh those? They’re all fakes – I just made them. Come on, I can’t afford that shit.”

Mantel first, forgery later, methinks.

BOOM.

It’s mother-effing fauxdenza* time.

We could flashback to the rough beginning of this particular fauxdenza via the power of HYPERLINKS or maybe just scroll down for a refresher.

OK. Let’s get our DIY on.

FAUXDENZA

Dimensions: 10′ long x 13-1/2″ deep x 33″ tall

Materials:

Ikea

8  -  Applad Doors (15 x 18″)
4  -  Akurum Wall Cabinets (30 x 18″)
8  -  Integral Hinge (2 pack)
2  -  Akurum Suspension Rail

Lumber

1  -  Wood  (14′ L x 15″W x 1″T) *I used Afrormosia

Tools:

Drill
Circular saw
Level
Tape Measure
Ratchet
Screws + appropriate anchors
Shims
Steel Wool
Fine Sandpaper
Danish Oil
Feed n’ Wax
Clean Rags

This poor, strange living room wall…

There was once a pipe shelf. Then I got bored with that. Then nothing for a bit. Then a floating storage credenza sounded good. Yup. Fauxdenza.

The whole fauxdenza thing boils down to just installing Ikea kitchen cabinets way, way too low. Since the tops of the wall cabinets aren’t meant to ever be seen and are all uglified, making some sort of aesthetically pleasing top becomes necessary. But first, installation.

The Akurum suspension rail system is designed to levely hang Akurum wall cabinets very simply. Of course, to install the rail you have to choose appropriate wall fasteners for your walls. For our plaster walls, screws into studs plus heavy duty anchors worked perfectly.

I test mounted the cabinets to see what the plumb/level situation was going to be when confronted with our old plaster walls.

Obvious shocker. Old plaster walls are really uneven.

The walls are wonky, but the other installation hurdle was that creepy giant non-functioning heater thing. Not only did it ugly up  the place, it’s location blocked the centered installation of the loooonnng fauxdenza.

So we removed the internal bits, framed out the wall, patched and painted it up (although, finding matching molding and large floor grates are still an issue).

Old house + plaster walls = Gappity gap gap

The last cabinet had a pretty large gap since the plaster wall took a sudden curve.

To correct the gap, first we shimmed the rail with some broken paint sticks from Home Depot, because that’s how we roll (unprofessionally). It was clear that the initial shim was nowhere near deep enough. We tested out how deep it had to be by sticking those little furniture foot pads onto the rail (unprofessionally).

Turns out, the last cabinet needed over an inch of the wackiest shimming you’ll never, ever see.

With the extreme shimming resolved and stuff hanging level, hiding the enormous new shim gap was the next quandary. The simple wood top I had planned on installing had to continue and wrap around the sides of the cabinets to disguise the monstrous shim gap.

For the newly expanded wood wrap, it felt best to find a better grade hardwood than I could grab at Home Depot.

With some brief googles I found Peterman Lumber, a local mill/lumber yard that specializes in domestic and exotic woods. They have wood wood, you know, wood you take seriously. Wood that won’t take crap from no one, no how.

Tight budget in mind, I settled on a 14 foot long piece of Afrormosia, which is an excellent and – cough* cough* - cheaper teak substitute. Fauxteak.

At about 15 inches wide by an inch thick, the piece I picked ran about $100 and looked purtty.

We used a handheld circular saw to cut the wood down to size. No fancy woodworking, no miters. Just simple straight lines.

I traced along the front edge of the cabinet door onto the wood sitting on top of the cabinets and pressed flush against the wall. No brainer, no craziness. Cut on the traced line for a superb custom fit.

Each joint, as well as the edges, got a quick sanding to knock down any unevenness and smooth things out.

The rest of the wood got prepped with a once over sanding using super fine steel wool. Pretty much, I went with the same process that I use to restore vintage furniture to treat this new wood. Slap on a few coats of Danish oil and a few coats of Feed n’ Wax and…

Bam.

That untreated wood darkens up and looks incredible.

To attach the wood, I predrilled a few holes through the inside of the cabinet frames and screwed into the bottom of the wood to secure it; of course, do not go through it completely. It only takes a few strategic screws to set the wood solidly in place, all fancy looking.

Initially, I had planned on using the Ikea Strecket handles and tested them out a bunch during the cabinet installation. Once the wood went on though, the handles suddenly looked way too fussy and got nixed.

Having no handles on the doors has been fine. The cabinets are high enough that I can comfortably grab the bottom door edge to open things up without any awkwardness.

Done and done.

For about $300, some labor and some problem solving, we custom-built a ten foot long floating credenza that adds tons of storage while being perfectly scaled and custom fit on an awkwardly long and barren entryway wall.

Being both super customizable and easily constructed, the fauxdenza seems a clever DIY solution for a wide spectrum of storage conundrums. Plus it looks sexy doing it, which never hurts.

The Potence lamp by Jean Prouvé is one of those elegantly minimalist lighting solutions that appears easier to construct than it actually is. Well, for me at least. I tried and failed, MISERABLY, to build an affordable DIY version for our bedroom and eventually gave up hope. Then? This email popped up brimming with pictures of a homemade version of the Potence that blew me away. Logan of ONEFORTYTHREE had written a comment long, long ago when I first posted about trying to build one of these thangs -

“Logan on February 1, 2011: I like the lamps but you’ve inspired me to try and make that wall lamp. It looks cool but too expensive to consider buying. If I can, YOU can! cause I’m a self-taught DIY’er too.”

Then? He totally f*cking did it. Like a DIY champion. Also, nope – turns out I can’t.

BOOM.

Did I mention that I kind of slobbered all over his emailed pictures and was like ohhh, ahhhh, woooow, you are a master fabricator, you are amazing, it turned out so great, mine failed so miserably…wink wink, nudge nudge.

So, Logan had been building a few of these tester lamps for friends and family while figuring out kinks and streamlining the fabrication process. I somehow ended up being lucky enough to get my hands on not one but TWO of the prototype versions. By unashamed groveling, perhaps?

One white version for the bedroom – which can swivel and swing to illuminate whichever area your heart desires.

And one black version for the den. Both areas we tend to relax, enjoy a good book or perhaps a long game of Words With Friends.

See? It swivels! You use the little wooden handle to move the lamp into position.

I love the detail of the braided cloth cord and handy little on/off switch positioned a little ways down the wiring. Logan worked it out on the little details to keep the lamp sleekly minimal but with areas of warm texture.

Chihuahua for scale.

My lamps are about six feet long and are perfect and I love them. Loved them so much and was so impressed by their handmade completely from scratch construction that I may have been a little forceful about Logan making a few available for sale. Maybe because I want to put them in all the homes I’m working on? Maybe out of complete selflessness? Weld! Weld till your fingers bleed!

Be sure to check out ONEFORTYTHREE for the DIY how to as well as even more of Logan’s great DIY projects and home renovation. A limited run of these lamps will be available in his newly minted ETSY STORE. Check them out and be on the lookout for additional handmade items to be added in the near future (wink wink, nudge nudge Logan).

*Also, homeboy just got engaged to his lovely, talented and hilarious lady. Congrats! Roxy was rocking some Vegas style bling at the big sale for realz.

I’ve been helping out Shelly Leer – aka ModHomeEc – with the design of her brand new upholstery workshop in Indianapolis. Shelly is a fantastic upholster and hosts classes to teach folks the ins and outs of fixing up and reupholstering their old forlorn stuff (a skill I can really appreciate).

With this open warehouse space, one big design issue Shelly needed help with was figuring out how to layout and define areas for various work and private “zones”. She needed areas for tools, areas for storage, an area for a personal office, a waiting area, an area to teach and work with students and so on and so forth. Functionally, this one big room had to be used for many many purposes and still be open, accessible and of course look awesome.

Since cost is always an issue (and this space is a rental), it wasn’t prudent to dump a bunch of cash into building traditional solid walls that would split up the space and make it feel smaller and darker. My solution was to build these vertical jute rope division walls that allowed for defined “zones” but still retained light and visibility throughout the entire space. A plus when using this type of jute rope is the added benefit of bringing in a chunky / graphic / warm texture to an otherwise cold and hard industrial room.

The construction process is pretty simple. Wood boxes were custom built with evenly spaced rope sized holes drilled through the top and bottom. Precut sections of rope were strung through the top and tied off at the bottom, allowing for the interior knot to hold the rope in place and taut. Just screw close the open side of the box and all those ugly knots are hidden away.

With this design the overall costs are kept pretty low for such a big impact. Rope is cheap, especially when bought in bulk, and wood boxes are very low cost to build. The true cost is going to be labor and time – it’s just a tedious and super repetitive process.

Come on. Hotness.

I think the outcome is pretty spectacular. Not that I’m bias or anything.

This roped off area is actually Shelly’s office!

I’m completely thrilled with how these rope walls came together and so happy I didn’t have to lift a finger and do any of the actual labor. There is another wall in the works that I’m pretty excited to see completed as well as other awesome ideas that came from designing Shelly’s new workspace to be affordable, functional and downright ‘effing stylish.

At this point I was hoping to be like, Hey! Check out all my stuff posted on eBay for pre-sale leading up to the big SALE! Look at all this previewed awesome furniture and other crap! Look at all that I have accomplished!

Well…that didn’t happen. Whoops.

But, I did build a little studio space (on my ghetto porch) so that I can take photos. Because why do something the easy way, when you can get all crazy and nit-picky and do it the super maniacal extreme way. I’ve been hunting for a cheap solution for this weird photo dilemma, which is that basically I need a designated area to take nice/clear/pretty photos.

Problems?

+ The house is jam packed, hoarder style.
+ There are no free walls with a corner and good light inside.
+ It is SO hard to move big furniture in and out of the tiny exterior doors.
+ The garage? HA! Where do you think all this extra stuff lives?
+ I plan on needing a nice little photo space for some time – but I want the inside of the house to stay a house.

The solution was to build these super cheap temporary walls on the back porch. Trust when I say that they are so ‘effing ghetto. Four pieces of 1/4″ drywall, six 2×4′s and some electrical tape.

Yeah. That’s right – they are literally taped and clamped together – but still freestanding so that eventually they can be moved off the porch and into the garage (if they don’t crumble out of sheer embarrassment).

During “construction” I may have broken our poor Fado porch light. Maybe I also hurt myself. Maybe I also designed them to be so cheap that I created a bunch of stupid extra work. Next time, maybe I’ll fork over a few extra dollars to build some complete frames instead of the “budget” version I thought was so brilliant (it wasn’t).

But at least. At the very least. I don’t have to look at the ugly nailed shut door and weird ghetto porch pipes anymore. This sort of confirms an idea I’ve been kicking around about doing some sort of wood wall treatment out here…

Guess what. These sloppy faux walls totally work!

Not just work, but are A-to the-MAZING.

It’s so nice and so easy to move furniture in there and not screw up my floors or bang the door frame or have the dogs jumping into every photo. I love it. LOVE LOVE. The light is great and it’s this little fun fake room I can style up however I please.

I’ve also been sorting through piles of vintage stuff fixing it up and deciding what stays and what goes. Lots of these tasty pieces never really got mentioned on the old bloggity…

Like this gorgeous Danish surfboard style rosewood coffee table. It. Is. YUMMY. Mmmmhmmmm.

Now that I built my little photo area, I’m working on getting this sale thing up and running. It’s madness, though. Total madness around here. I mean, seriously, I’m one lady and there are piles of stuff. PILES.

More previews & info soon. Better be. May 15th is coming fast.

My little DIY fence bench was a top finalist for the ReadyMade 100 and was recreated for the magazine and published with instructions for their April/May issue. Sadly, I didn’t win top bad ass project because I failed. I’m a failure.

Oh come on, I’m just screwing around. It’s awesome and I’m super psyched to be included.

Here is the original bench in all it’s reclaimed woody glory. You can check out instructions for making it HERE. Also, it looks like you can order a book that includes all 100 projects right HERE.

Thanks to ReadyMade and all the judges for thinking I’m only a little bit of a failure. You know, on the winningest side of failure.

A few years back we installed almost 4,000 sqft gravel driveway with our bare hands. It was misery. Back breaking misery.

Part of the driveway installation entailed that we lay down rolls and rolls of landscaping fabric to help control the inevitable weed problem. Well, no one quite explained that weeds wouldn’t grow through the fabric, but they would totally grow on top of it. Dirt settles between the rocks and then the weeds are like, “hey guys its awesome over here – lets move in.”

Since installing the driveway, which feels like forever ago, we’ve been battling the shameful ghetto weeds about this time of year. Somehow through a mixture of the super moon, super rain storms and supernatural mystical forces bent on driving me nuts, the weeds have been particularly hardy and spiteful.

We hand pulled the bigger ones, which in some twisted irony are way easier to remove than the baby weeds. So, we tend to let these bad boys get big and then yank them. Usually the summer heat kills everything outright and we wait for the scheduled die off, but it’s been so lovely and wet out that the weeds found purchase and made themselves a little too comfortable too early in the season.

Also found some lovely artifacts hiding in the weeds caught from the wind blowing into our wide open backyard – empty cigarette boxes, trash bags, some cans, chip bags, some stuff that looked like blood – you know all the glittering detritus that Hemet bestows on us.

Weeds? I made you my bitch.

To conquer the little baby and broken weeds left over from the great weed massacre (and to deter any other punks that wanna mess with me) I gave the driveway a nice bath of salt and vinegar. Still tastes terrible though.

50 pounds of salt ($8) and a few gallons of vinegar ($3) from the local Smart & Final are my DIY and more “green” solution than grabbing some chemical weed killer from the local hardware store. Who am I kidding – have you seen the prices on that weed killer stuff? It’s OUTRAGEOUS. We need tons to cover this giant driveway, so my broke ass is going to try this salt & vinegar solution and see how it works.

BTW, after a couple days the left over weeds are looking pretty shriveled and brown; take that you bastards! Let’s see how it works out long term – I’m totally salting the earth out of vengeance, but from what I read the next few rainfalls will probably dilute it all within the next few months. Whatever, salt is cheap and weed killer is not.

When we first moved to the house almost three years ago, all of the fences were mismatched and falling apart. Very slowly (very very slowly) we’ve been reconstructing and redesigning them.

The front fence is one of the bigger eyesores round these parts and divides the street from the side yard. It poses an especially difficult design dilemma with a number of annoying problems to address. I’ve been thinking about how to span the weird 16’10″ gap with as little wood splicing possible and the lowest overall cost, while still maintaining privacy and staying sympathetic with the horizontal front slat screen.

There is also the whole ugly backside issue with the added bonus of having to meet up with the vertical posts problem. All in all, lots of odd issues to deal with.

I called around and got tons of quotes for different materials and sizes and ended up having a semi-local lumber yard custom mill twelve 1 x 6″ x 20′ rough cut cedar boards. It ended up being about $200 for the material and was the cleanest looking and least expensive method of spanning that wide space that I could figure out.

One of our many talents as DIY home owners is being great at demo. Maybe the methods are a little ghetto at times, but in the end we are very good at destroying things.

It was unbelievable how huge and heavy the cement footings for the fence supports where. These things had to be knocked down and drug out by the diesel truck and everything hacked apart. Although, nothing goes to waste around here…

We cut up all the old fencing material and are now flush with firewood.

After everything was demolished and removed, we needed to start rebuilding the supports. Initially, I wanted the far right post to be flush with the wall, but unfortunately, there is a huge chunk of the houses foundation and lots of pipes to contend with in that immediate area. Our first big compromise was moving the support post over about a foot instead of flush to the wall.

The far left support post also had to support the rest of the perpendicular fence, so we had to compromise again by moving it all the way to the far left. This move caused the center support to be centered off the two supports, which is not quite center to the yard.

Funky old houses. I’m telling you, nothing but redesign and compromise constantly. With Every. Single. Project.

Maybe if we weren’t so cheap we would have devised some crazy scheme to make it work – but then we probably wouldn’t be building it ourselves either…

Once all the support posts where cemented in, we made a template to keep our screws square and centered on the horizontal face boards. It appears that the third attempt is the charm.

With the template in use, installing the front boards was a breeze. We’ve been slowly learning how to build this stuff a lot cleaner, more efficiently and a tad more pro looking…slowly. After screwing up a bunch.

Here is where you can see the support post compromise assert itself. Didn’t really solve the ugly backside problem, but it doesn’t really bother me that much. If in a year it does bug me, maybe I’ll clad the backside with some cedar boards to hide the supports.

To finish off the top of the fence, we used the same 1×2″ redwood boards we used for the slat screen. After we measured out the same 1-1/2″ spacing and installed the smaller boards, we marked out how high the supports posts needed to be and then unscrewed the top run and chopped off the top of the support posts with a skill saw. Custom fancy stuff.

Here it is all finished up with the construction phase. The next step was to oil the wood down and seal everything against the weather, bugs and chaos of the outside world.

Through the power of internet immediacy, here it is all oiled up. We used Penofin for the slat screen and then Superdeck for the fence. The logic being? Superdeck is easier to find? More options? I don’t really recall.

They are pretty much the same stuff – oil that binds inside the wood and protects it from UV, water, termites, ect. Just roll it on and wipe it off after twenty or so minutes.

The broken down front planter looks terrible. This must be the next big project and it’s totally getting the steel edging treatment.

So fresh! So clean!

After a little while in the blinding desert sun the color is going to mellow out. The slat screen was similarly bright when we first treated it.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We tested a patch of the oil on the weathered wood of the side fence and it looks really good. So that solves the question of what to do with that.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Now, we just need to redo the planter then build a gate then hardscape then build a side fence then irrigation then landscaping then lighting then mailbox then roof…arrrgggghhhhhhh. This is going to be the Decade of the Exterior.

When we disassembled the side yard fence there were a bunch of rotten 4×4″ posts left over. I’ve been considering building a small bench for the master bedroom for some time and when presented with the wood leftovers, thoughts of a very cheap but super chunky piece of furniture danced in my noggin. Paired with a pair of left over Eames LTR bases (salvaged from our old beat up surfboard table) this little reclaimed wood bench was pretty easy to assemble.

Here’s how:

Materials:

4 – Reclaimed wood fence posts
2 – Eames LTR bases (I salvaged mine off a broken Eames elliptical table)
4 – 12″ metal straps
Bunch of Screws
Teak Oil (or Danish Oil)
Sander

First, we cut off the rotten ends of the fence posts which left us with a usable length of 56″.

Then, I inset the bases 6″ from the end.

The straps were placed evenly around the bases and screwed into the wood.

To finish up construction, the the bases were then screwed into place.

Boom. Done.

Almost…

I gave the wood a quick sanding to remove any residual gunk, dirt or splinters.

After the dust was cleaned off, I rubbed the wood down with a few coats of teak oil (I had it laying around) to seal and protect the wood. Then done!

The treated wood darkens up a lot with the oil.