The Two S'

Spackling and Sanding--those are the two s' we are talking about today.  Remember this post about casing in one of our entryways in our front hall?  Well I spent about an hour and a half last night spackling and sanding that entryway.  I have never spackled anything before, but my husband had faith in me that I could do it.  All I could think was, "Boy, he's brave!!"  I decided to try this spackling thing out while he was at work.  I figured that I could find my rhythm before he got home, so that I looked like I knew what I was doing. ;)  Fortunately it wasn't too hard to figure out.  I put some spackle over the holes where the nails were and then went back and wiped off the excess spackle.  I made sure that the holes were completely filled.

Here's what the casings looked like after I spackled over the holes:

In the above picture, you can see where I spackled the section between the casing and the inside of the entryway.  Some of the white paint that was there before had started to chip, so I went ahead and spackled over it to assure that there wouldn't be imperfections when we paint.  

The header was a little bit harder to spackle due to it's curviness.  My finger was great to smear the putty on the nail holes that were on the header.  I tried to use the putty knife at first, but that just wasn't workin'.  So here you can see the holes that I filled on the header:

After every hole and rough edge had been spackled over, I let it set for about a half an hour (I'm sure you don't really need to let it set since it pretty much sets right away) while I went out and pulled some weeds in the front garden beds.  I needed to get away for a little bit and come back.  

Next came the sanding part.  The "oh my goodness, my hand feels like it's on fire!" part.  Blah.  I sanded down each and every hole that was filled so that it was perfectly smooth and even with the rest of the wood.  I found that the curvy edges of the header were not only hard to spackle, but they were hard to sand as well.   I'm pretty sure the sanding block I was using is completely done-zo.  Sorry honey! :)

Here's the header and casing after sanding:

Now we are officially prepped and ready for paint!! :)

What house projects have you gotten into lately?  Do they require lots of sanding?  I'm pretty sure I'm done sanding for the next month--too bad we have a bazillion more things to sand around here. Ahh!