Stained side door today

Today I got the side door stained. This was a relief because each door now has at least one coat and is less likely to get damaged. It's hard to find the time to do each coat since I have to stay home with the door open for 5-8 hours. I still need to do a total of 5 coats so I hope to get this done before I start school. I used brushes I bought at Ikea for this job, and I would recommend against them. It's great that they carry brushes for all the unfinished wood they sell, but the brushes were just not suitable for this job. They are cheap and don't have a solid block of bristles - they have bristles around the outside and nothing inside. As a result, the brush doesn't hold much stain. As I continued to work, the brush got less and less able to create a smooth finish and it was really hard to use around edges and corners. I've used other cheap brushes and they've worked fine, I just did not like the Ikea brushes.

While I call it "staining" the doors, there is really no stain involved. I am using a clear product which has a slight yellow-orange tint to it. It protects the wood and really makes it beautiful. Here is a shot of the door jamb half coated. The strip on the right of the black line (weather stripping) is already stained. The narrow strip to the left of the weather stripping is the same wood not stained. The wide strip on the far left is a kitchen cabinet. I think the stain makes the wood look really good.

Here is another shot of the half-stained door jamb.



Here is the half-stained jamb and the unstained door. The newspaper is covering a window in the door.



I did manage to speak with the general contractor today who told me what his foreman said is wrong. WHAT!?! What's with all the drama? We have several meetings, followed by a last meeting to work the details out, everything is fine, foreman shows up, panic, then "oh, it's nothing." I really resent wasting 3 hours of my time and wracking my brain all day trying to get a derailed project back on track.

The GC wants to cut the offending tree root, and keeps assuring me the tree will be fine. I am not so sure about cutting the main root of a tall tree. But it is a ficus, which have notoriously aggressive and large root systems. I spent 2 hours online trying to get assurance it would be okay but could not. C and I are going to wait until we see the contract to raise further issues. We need that contract, and once it's in front of us we can begin negotiating the final terms. But first we just need a darn contract!

The stucco guy came by at 5:15 to fix a few small streaks in the finish. This was supposed to be my time to work outside, but as with many days my schedule was completely upended.