The Random Orbital Sander

I crossed another living-in-NorthAmerica milestone today. I bought myself a power tool: The Random Orbital Sander. For the uninitiated, that’s sandpaper on steroids.

There are three pieces of furniture in my environment, in need of a coat of paint. For the last seven years. Let’s cancel out the Covid era, so we’re still at four or five years. Two are pieces of Ikea madness and the third is a 50 year old dining table, the sturdiest piece of furniture I own.

Attempt one at painting the little Ikea desk – five years ago – was an epic fail. The paint slipped and slid on the surface like a Montrealer on an icy sidewalk. It just wouldn’t stay on! A root cause analysis and several YouTube videos later, all was clear. Apparently surfaces needed to be stripped of existing paint and sanded before one brought out the paints and brushes. Huh, who knew?! You’d think they’d put that in the adulting manual someplace. The little Ikea desk, now half white and half various shades of orange in patches just continued to serve its normal purpose, its cosmetic limitations notwithstanding. It was Kintsugi, I told myself. Imperfection makes it more beautiful. Not everyone agreed, I think, but no one was motivated enough to offer an alternative perspective. Or repaint the thing.

Armed with new insights, three years later, I turned to the dining table, a “magnificent piece of mid century furniture”. (Uff, the things you pick up watching Netflix shows on home makeovers). Older and wiser by now, I started with YouTube. Oh dear. Now I learn sandpaper is not just a thing but a whole species, with a taxonomy of cousins. And sanding itself is not a skill but a full-fledged profession with an array of tools, bits and bobs. Could one hand sand? Or did you need a belt sander? Or a hand held orbital sander? Or even better, a random orbital sander. Dear uninitiated, please note. Random is with capital R, is part of the name, not a casually tossed around adjective.

I’ll hand sand this table, I decided after the 7th DIY video. 6 more months had elapsed by then. And off I went one Saturday afternoon to buy myself sandpaper. But was my sanding education complete? Evidently not. What grit do you need? I was asked at the store. Umm. Err. Grit… the determined kind? Furtively googled sandpaper grit and got a rapid overview. The 80 and 120 I bravely decided, based on the sliver of insight provided by Google’s top search result. A set of 10 sheets travelled home with me.

But obviously, it was mid winter by now. The white cold stuff lay heavy and knee deep all around. Sanding indoors in never a good idea, my YouTube mentors had warned. Outside, dear mentors, is not an option at the moment. Where are we going to eat? others wanted to know. And that’s how the the sandpaper sheets came to sit in the cupboard for another couple of years, sliding further and further into the recesses, crowded out by masks, sanitizers, and other flotsam and jetsam.

This summer a new candidate joined the NeedsPaint list. Not just another minor league piece of furniture. It was the granddaddy of paintable items. So large that it lurked just at the edge of DIY. Makes the half painted orange Ikea desk look like Microsoft’s Clippy in front of ChatGPT: It’s the deck at the back of the house. Nearly a 150 square feet of wood surface in a now unrecognizable color, peeling pathetically. Hiring a sanding and painting professional is going to cost more than the deck and all the furniture at this point. And may well take another seven years. It’s Montreal, after all.

Push has come to shove. It’s now or never. I must jump into the abyss.

So I come to own a Random Orbital Sander and one hundred and twenty 5-inch sanding disks of varying roughness. The deck looms. The other furniture look at each other nervously. Another 60-90 days of sanding season left. The tension is palpable. The scene is gritty. Will it happen?

Or will we have to wait for the next season?