THE STRIPPER.

These past several days, I've been stripping---my maternal grandparents' old Victorian mantel, that is.

This is the second of the two mantels I inherited from my grandparents. I've previously blogged about the first mantel, which is now a lovely focal point in our living room.

It's taken my husband, John, and me two more years to get to the point where we could begin restoring the second mantel, which is going in our master bedroom. We left the second mantel for last because it's much more massive and ornate than the first mantel, so we knew it was going to prove a great deal more work, which would be quite time consuming, as well. So far, we've been right about that.

We've already labored off and on for days, stripping off all the mantel's old varnish, and we've just now reached the stage where we think we've got it all, and we can begin sanding the wood to prep it for staining. We're going to stain this mantel mahogany, too, just as we did the first one (most all of our furniture is mahogany or dark cherry).

I was supposed to be out on our patio today, making sure all the mantel's old varnish is indeed gone and getting started on the sanding. But instead, I spent most of this morning answering interview questions in connection with my forthcoming novel, The Crystal Rose. So I'm getting a very late start this afternoon on the mantel. Nevertheless, I've got to get on with it, since I don't know how much more time I'll have to work on it in the coming days.

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted a second version of my proposal for my next novel to my editor (she didn't think the first one was detailed enough), and I'm hoping she is going to approve it any day now, so I can get started writing the actual book. That, of course, will sharply curtail all the time I have to do things like refinishing mantels.

In the meantime, I've finished repainting our bedroom walls---and succeeding in convincing John that the new color calls for redecorating everything else in the room, too. *vbg*