Next came the beeswax, sweet and shiny. It almost broke his heart to
apply it, because the soft, newly exposed wood was so deliciously tender
and sensuous. But he knew that wood left to its own would eventually
chip and splinter and yellow. So he rubbed wax until his elbows ached,
*massaged* the wax into the wood, buffed it with shop rags so that the
house shone.
Twenty coats of urethane took forty days -- a day to coat and a day to
dry. More buffing and the house took on a high shine, a slippery
slickness. He nearly broke his neck on the slippery staircase treads,
and the Portuguese helped him out with a bag of clear grit made from
ground walnut shells. He used a foam brush to put one more coat of
urethane on each tread of the stairs, then sprinkled granulated walnut
shells on while it was still sticky. He committed a rare error in
judgment and did the stairs from the bottom up and trapped himself on
the third floor, with its attic ceilings and dormer windows, and felt
like a goddamned idiot as he curled up to sleep on the cold, hard,
slippery, smooth floor while he waited for his stairs to dry. The
urethane must be getting to his head.
The bookcases came out of the cellar one by one. Alan wrestled them onto
the front porch with Tony's help and sanded them clean, then turned them
over to Tony for urethane and dooring.
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