Rain on My Parade

I had my weekend timeline carefully planned to finally finish the door! After staining the backsides of all the trim, I planned to do a first coat of stain on the front side on Friday evening, a second coat Saturday morning, install it all Saturday afternoon, then paint the door and the back stairs Sunday.

Until it started raining Friday afternoon. When I got home from work, it was really coming down. "Meh, too humid to effectively stain," I thought, planning instead to stain Saturday morning and again mid-day.

But Saturday was so oppressively humid that the saturated air wouldn't absorb any more moisture. I waited until the overnight rain dried up (ha!), then applied my first coat late Saturday morning, around 11. I figured it should be dry by mid-afternoon, plenty of time to apply a second coat, and then install first thing Sunday morning.

Every time I checked on my little staining set up - a couple old sheets on the garage floor - things were still wet. The mid-afternoon shower didn't help, either. I kept the garage door open while I was home, hoping that some non-existent breeze would help the process. And since I was working on the outsides of the boards - the pieces I'll have to look at every time I come or go - I wanted to make sure things were good and dry before applying a second coat to guard against smudges.

The last time I checked on my litany of lumber, about 10:30 PM, nearly twelve hours post-application, everything was still tacky. Sunday morning, first thing, before I even read made coffee (too hot for it, anyway), I went out to apply a second coat. Things were even more humid than Saturday, so I wrote off any chance of weekend installation.

And when I went to bed about 11 PM, some of the boards were still damp.

It's been a year since I started this project; what's another week?

Now excuse me while I go move the boards out of the garage. There's more rain forecast tonight.