Anger

Confession time.

Anger is a very difficult emotion to cope with. I have spent many years confronting my anger issues; dealing with and coming to terms with. Fortunately, my anger is not directed at people, but inanimate objects. I have spent a small fortune on computer screens, for example! Anger is complicated. It often stems from a lack of understanding; frustration and the like. In my case , it is rarely triggered by other people. Generally speaking, I am the cause, whether it be through not thinking or simply trying to rush things. Such was the case recently...

I noticed that my beautiful door that I had built had some awful blemishes that I had neglected to deal with. I had to sand the area and fill the holes. Once done, I sanded back the repairs. I then restained the areas. The only problem was that it looked blotchy. I realised that I was going to have to sand back the entire panel, removing all the stain from the surface, so that the stain would be an even covering. I spent a good while sanding back the panel. Just as I was nearing the completion of that operation, the heavens opened. I tried to quickly finish the job, but the rain was so intense that the door was being ruined; as the water landed, wet blotches quickly formed instant bumps of swelling. I had to grab everything and get it all indoors. With very little room, I tried to finish the job, but only succeeded in making it worse (I even tripped over the damn thing!) Very quickly, something ‘snapped’ and the ‘red mist’ came down. Out of frustration, the door was launched out through the doorway!

Not good!

I suddenly came to my senses and looked in horror at my beautiful door lying on the pavement in the pissing rain. I took a deep breath just as the rain subsided and the world was again bathed in sunshine, then ventured out to examine the damage.

The first thing that was evident was that the door had been built solidly; it was still intact; nothing broken. But I soon discovered some serious damage. My heart sunk further as I examined the damage on the corners. One corner was badly crushed and splintered. The other corner was severely frayed. To add insult, the two damaged corners were both the ends of the top edge. Had it been the bottom, I might have been able to bodge it as it would never be seen once fitted.

Leaving the door on the work table, I walked away, dejected. I kept going back to it and looking at the damage, thinking that I would never be able to repair it, the damage was too severe. The more I looked, the more I wanted to cry.

After a while, I started to look at it differently. I knew that there was no way that I was going to start again. I had no chance of removing the damaged piece of wood without sawing it off. Replacing it was not an option. Michael suggested that I could perhaps fit a shelf to it, which would go a long way to hiding the damage. A very viable option. But then he said, “Or you can learn new skills.” Well, that got me to thinking that it must be repairable, antique restorers repair worse. So I started thinking about how they would look at it. I spent a while thinking through how I was to go about repairing the damage.

After a day or two, I started work. Firstly, I carefully glued the splinter back and clamped it. I then lagged the area in glue. With the other corner, I covered the area in glue, then pushed all the frays together and clamped. The next day, I removed the clamps and gently sanded. It looked alright. I then reshaped the corners with a filler. I left it to harden overnight. I then sanded back and carefully shaped the edges. I finished with a fine sand to get a nice smooth finish.

Pretty good effort, I reckon.

I’ve now stripped the whole door of it’s stain, sanded and filled all the scratches, etc. and am now in the process of restaining the entire door to bring me back to where I was before I ‘lost the plot’. Yay!