I’ve talked before about not leaving well enough alone when I finish a project. In this case the job was fine, but I just don’t like it.

Yeah, I’m one of those won’t-leave-well-enough-alone types. I’ll tweak something to death, usually messing it up in the process. But this time around I did everything right the first time and haven’t even felt the need to monkey around with it. I’m talking about the final finish on a recently completed piece of furniture, so it’s a good thing I’m not trying to tweak it – nothing ruins a finishing job faster and more thoroughly than trying to mess with it after it’s done. But in this case there’s no danger of ruining it by trying to make it better. It’s already fine.

No, the problem is that this time I’m just not happy with the results.

You know how it is: You’re going for a particular “look,” and you approached the finishing process with that goal, that final look, in mind. But when you’re all done, you didn’t achieve it. Doesn’t mean your finishing job was a failure; it doesn’t even mean you did a poor job. All it means is that you tried a particular method to achieve a particular result – a result that was never based in reality, but rather just on something you had in your head – and that method didn’t deliver what you had in mind. In fact, no method may have delivered it.

My wife likes the result. So have a couple other people I’ve showed it to. They all think it looks great.

So why am I so bummed out?

Till next time,

A.J.