TV Stand - Final Steps

Before I get into the details of the finish, as promised I've included a better picture of my plans. It started with stealing the TV box back from my daughter, cutting it up and drawing a full size plan in pencil along with a high level overview of the major steps. I write down the steps for a couple of reasons. One is to make my next trip out the shop as efficient as possible. I hate spending the first 30 minutes of shop time trying to catch myself up. The second reason is that some steps are better done before assembly and a pain if forgotten. Once assembly is complete it's fairly straightforward.

From the beginning I knew what I wanted the end product to look like including the colour. In the end though the colour turned out darker that I was expecting but still the colour I wanted. (If that makes sense.) The traditional finish for white oak is to put it in an inclosed space and 'fume' it using ammonia. It takes several days and darkens woods like Oak. I'm sure one day I will try fuming however since I used a mix of plywood and solid wood I knew the colour wouldn't end up consistent so I decided to try aniline dies for the first time instead.

Aniline dies come in a powder or liquid form and you mix them with water or alcohol. Lee Valley just happens to sell a fumed oak colour. This is where the colour issue I mentioned early came. When I tried it on a sample it was darker than I was expecting. I still liked it and after a bit of research realized that fumed oak was darker that I thought. When I went to do the final finish, I threw a bit of extra water in to lighten it slightly and two coats later it came out looking amazing.

I'm not exactly set up to be a furniture finisher and I now understand why pro-woodworkers sub contract it out. It takes a ton of knowledge and a dusty shop is not conducive to an error free finish. A 10 degree Celsius shop is also not great so I'm limited on the types of finish I can apply. I have a nice sprayer and at one point had a temporary spray booth but was a pain to put up and take down so I've gone in a different direction. In the winter I clean out the guest room and do the little pieces in the laundry room and the big pieces in the guest room. It's a hand rubbed poly from Min-wax and it's very forgiving.

The finished product was exactly what I envisioned. The only thing I might add is a false back to the lower shelf so I can hide the power bar but other than that it fits nicely in our living room, isn't over powering and compliments the TV nicely.