(drumroll)
Trumpet fanfare!!!
A couple of weeks ago, we adopted a new dog.
His name is River, and we got him from the Golden Retriever Rescue of Atlanta.
And he's already potty trained. He's crate trained. He knows some basic commands,
if you can ...
That was him.
And he's for the most part just a big lovable teddy bear doofus of a dog.
No I'm going to the bathroom. No.
Get off! (grunting as I pull)
THUD
(laughing)
Unfortunately, there are some minor behavior issues that we're trying to work on,
one of which is that he keeps digging.
(dog growling)
So, in order to have the herbs and flowers that I normally love to have around the house,
I'm going to have to come up with some other solutions.
Unfortunately because wood has tripled in price since last year,
I'm having to be a little bit creative in how I do this.
I had kept part of an old playset that I had dismantled, that was basically the platform of the playset.
And we used it as a backstop for my daughter shooting her bow and arrow, and throwing balls
against, and that sort of thing. But I decided to repurpose it, since the wood was still reasonably
decent, take it apart, and use it to make a new shelf that I can put plants on top of, so it's a
little bit harder for him to get to them.
Of course after I dismantled it, the first thing I had to do was
sand it down, because it was pretty filthy and gross, and then I patched up some of the holes
with a little bit of homemade wood putty that I stained with the color I'm going to stain on here,
to make the screws fit in a little bit better, because they had gotten a little bit loose over time.
And so now I'm up to the point where I can put a little bit of stain on them.
Because, why not? I mean it's not the best wood in the world, but why not make it look as nice as I can?
And I've already got this stuff laying around so might as well use it.
I'm also going to put a coat of varnish on these,
and I'm going to use some from a company called Total Boat.
As you would imagine, they make paints and varnishes for boats,
so I thought it would be a good thing to use on this project,
that's going to be exposed to the elements all the time.
Now I will admit that the company sent me this product for free to test out,
but I am under no contractual obligation to give them some glowing review.
I have high hopes for it though. I mean, it says "Recoat within one hour" which is nice,
and it says "no sanding between coats" which I'm a little bit skeptical about to be honest.
But this is actually a pretty good project to test that out on, so we'll see.
You know, I gotta admit, I really like this packaging. This little packet, this is kind
of cool. You can kind of squeeze it out like toothpaste.
I'm going to use the satin version of this. They sent me a high gloss version as well, but I think the
satin version is probably going to be better for this particular project. So here it goes.
I was just reading the fine print on this, and on the back under the
directions in this little tiny print, it says "For best results and best finished quality,
always sand prior to applying the final coat."
So on the front it says no sanding between coats,
but in the directions, it actually does indicate that it's probably a good idea if you sand it.
I put the first coat of varnish on while it was still dismantled, but I'm going to go ahead and assemble
it and then put another couple of coats on. I am not going to sand it in between the layers,
simply because I don't really care about having a perfect finish on this. It's old wood to begin with,
and it's going to be outside all the time. I'm just trying to protect it a little bit, and I'm
going to see how it goes, frankly, see how the whole "no sanding between coats" thing actually works out.
So I had planned for this to just be a platform that I could use to put plants on top of, to make
it harder for the dog to dig into them, but I made a few modifications while I was putting
it together, and now it's actually strong enough that it works really well as a bench.
So I think I'm just going to keep it like this. And in the meantime, my neighbor loaned me a big
jug of cayenne pepper that they had used for their dog to get their dog to quit digging, so I'm trying
that out in all my plants, and I'm gonna see if that works. I don't know if it's cruel or not,
because it is cayenne pepper after all and who wants to get that up in their nose or their tongue
But the dogs will only dig in it once and they're not gonna go back to that.
So hopefully it'll work.
Hey buddy!
Let's see if it works.
He doesn't want to go in there now (laughing)
...company did send me this product for free to test out...
Hey River! Oh give me that...no no no no no...
His favorite thing is anything fabric to put in his mouth to carry around. Usually he likes socks,
sometimes he'll go for towels or rags that have chemicals on them that he probably shouldn't have in his mouth.
Sometimes it's underwear! You never really know what's going to end up in his mouth.
It's like having a toddler again.