When I came up with the idea for this project, I had one goal, make a cabinet with glass and then light the inside with LEDs. All through the planning phase, I was very confident that I would be able to pull off this project. In my 3D model, I had all the placement of the LEDs laid out, making sure to even allow for the floating shelves to be adjusted! Of all the projects I have done in the past few months, this one probably had the most planning put into it.

Then we come to the first roadblock, which was the wood. I went to the lumber yard to buy enough walnut for this project because I wanted to work with a natural wood, but they were sold out. So, my last-minute backup plan was to buy red oak and stain it dark brown like I’ve done in the past. Hindsight being 20/20, I should’ve gone home and figured out the backup plan a little better since trying to stain this project proved to be a bit of a hassle later on.

From that point on the roadblocks kept getting worse. I got very sick for a week, then I started doing a lot of overtime at my job and of course, there were the holidays. For a project I had planned to finish at the beginning of December, all these little delays just kept pushing the “finish date” further and further out of reach. I find it extremely difficult to stay excited and passionate about a project when I start taking too much time away from it, which is exactly what happened here.

I’m also not one to give up easily, so by the end of December my goal was just to get this project done. This led me to rush some steps and overall is what made this project somewhat of a failure in my opinion. That sounds harsh for a fairly decent project, but the reason this is a failure is that I wasn’t able to accomplish that initial goal of lighting a cabinet with LEDs. I will admit, that there were some very good lessons learned, mainly that I think I’m done trying to stain wood for a while and that I need to take more time to improve my stained glass skills.