Yesterday, lured into action by the fact that it was not raining and we might actually finish something we started, Len and I hauled half my half-finished kitchen worksurface out into the yard and relentlessly sanded it with a big belt sander for a couple of hours. The work surface is made from thick thick tongue and groove pine floorboarding and in the year or so it has been sat, unfinished in my kitchen it has slowly warped into something resembling a ploughed field. Ridge and furrow ridge and furrow. Yesterday we got the bugger flat again.

We bought it inside and using copious amounts of glue (most of which went where we wanted) and a couple of sash cramps and every large G cramp I have we got glued together and flat. We left the glue to harden overnight.

Today too was bright and sunny. We freed it from its clamps, hauled it back outside again onto the tressles and sanded it once more with the belt sander but with a finer grit paper this time. Then we sanded it by hand with an even finer grit paper. It's not perfect by any means but has a nice smooth finish now. I brushed it down, then wiped it with a damp cloth to get rid of the last of the fine saw dust. Then I gave it a good coat of clear polyeurethane.

Then a bird shat on it.